NACo and Prevent Child Abuse America have launched a national initiative to encourage replication of the Healthy Families America Program (HFA). The HFA program promotes positive parenting, encourages child health and development, and seeks to prevent child abuse and neglect. Healthy Families offers home visitation and related services to families in 39 states with more than 420 local community-based sites.

Through a grant from the Freddie Mac Foundation, NACo will provide interested county officials with information and technical assistance on developing a Healthy Families Program. Additionally, NACo can provide counties with information on strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect and help explore solutions for replication of successful Healthy Families America programs.

NACo will also produce a series of Best Practice guides and work to provide technical assistance by forming a peer exchange network.

Participation in HFA services is entirely voluntary and aimed at supporting and assisting parents as they work to meet their child’s developmental needs. Recent studies on early brain development have shown that love and attention provided by parents and caregivers to children in their first years of life lay a critical foundation that will last throughout a child’s lifetime.

“The excitement generated by HFA has been unprecedented and represents a commitment by public and private entities, as well as the general public, to focus on early childhood development and parenting,” said NACo Immediate Past President, C. Vernon Gray, a strong supporter of Healthy Families.

For every dollar spent on prevention, at least two dollars are saved that might otherwise have been spent on child welfare, special education, medical care, foster care, counseling and housing juvenile offenders, Gray pointed out.

For additional information or to explore the possibility of bringing a Healthy Families program to your county, contact Debbie Slack Katz, NACo Healthy Families project coordinator, at (202) 942-4246 or e-mail her at dslackka@naco.org.