What is Healthy Families?

Healthy Families Illinois, Rock Island County (HFI/RI), a program of the Child Abuse Council, is part of the Healthy Families America (HFA) national initiative, launched in 1992 by Prevent Child Abuse America, formerly known as the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect (NCPCA), in partnership with Ronald McDonald House Charities and the Freddie Mac Foundation. HFA's primary goal is to ensure that parents, particularly those facing the greatest challenges, get off to a good start.

HFA programs subscribe to the following overarching goals:

• To systematically assess for families strengths and needs and refer as needed

• To enhance family functioning by building trusting relationships, teaching problem-solving skills, and improving the family's support system

• To promote positive parent-child interaction

• To promote healthy childhood growth and development

Healthy Families Programs offer prenatal and postnatal services to parents to identify the presence of stressors that may inhibit positive parenting and health practices; offer parenting education and support commensurate with a family's level of need; make weekly home visits available to enrolled families for a minimum of 6 months; and collaborate with other family support organizations to provide a comprehensive continuum of services to families, thereby avoiding duplication. 

The Child Abuse Council began its HFI/RI program in 1998 and received full credentialing status from HFA in December 2002. To be a credentialed Healthy Families site, a program must demonstrate competency in 12 major program areas and be measured against 125 standards. The HFI/RI program criteria includes the following: use of a standardized assessment tool to systematically identify families who are in most need of services; offering services voluntarily and the use of positive, persistent outreach efforts to build family trust; offering services intensely with well-defined criteria for increasing or decreasing intensity of service and over the long-term; offering services that are culturally competent such that staff understand, acknowledge, and respect cultural differences among participants; offering services that focus on supporting the parent(s), as well as, supporting parent-child interaction and child development; linking families to a medical provider to assure optimal health and development; assigning limited caseloads to staff to assure that home visitors have an adequate amount of time to spend with each family; recruiting and hiring staff because of their personal characteristics, and their willingness to work with culturally diverse populations; providing training to staff that will enable them to handle a variety of experiences they may encounter when working with families; and providing on-going and effective supervision. 
HFA is a national program model using research based curriculum. Healthy Families San Angelo curriculum, "Healthy Babies, Healthy Families" is used as the basis for service delivery. To account for cultural and ethnic diversity of families receiving services, over 40 additional sources of parent education materials are available for use with participants. The HFI/RI program has the capacity to serve English, Spanish, German, and French speaking families. The parent's culture, education, interests, and personal learning style are taken into consideration when selecting resources to use with the family: i.e. discussion, videos, role modeling, and parent groups.

The centerpiece of the Healthy Families Program is the home visiting services provided by the Family Support Worker (FSW). Home visiting affords an opportunity to work with the individuals in the family context, enabling the FSW to learn, first hand, the condition of life for the parent and child and to appropriately respond to them. 

Brain development research findings make a clear case for voluntary home visitation in the earliest years of a child's life. These findings indicate a window of opportunity during the first three years of life when a child's brain is most able to respond and grow from positive interaction with his/her parents. A stimulating environment can maximize a child's learning potential, physical health, and brain development. HFI/RI provides parents with the skills and knowledge to help their babies grow and thrive. The program focuses on issues such as parent-child interaction and bonding, nutrition, health care, and the well being of the family. HFI involvement increases children's immunization rates and well baby visits.