Families First

The primary goal of the Families First program is to help parents keep their families whole and healthy and give their children the best possible start in life.

Parents as Teachers (PAT) is the name of the award winning early childhood parent education and fa mily support curriculum designed to help parents of children newborn to age five. The vision of the Parents as Teachers curriculum is that all parents will be their child’s first and best teacher.  The program is free and voluntary.

Essential components of the Parents as Teachers project include the following:

• Home visits by parent educators certified in the PAT curriculum
• Group meetings with other parents
• Periodic screening of overall child development, language, hearing, and vision
• Linking of families with community resources for needed services

• Family Outreach is the name of the curriculum designed to help parents of children age six to twelve.
• Referrals to this program generally come from educators who notice a child “acting out” at school.
• Parent educators visit parents in the home with information on positive discipline, parenting skills, and more.

Please Read to Me is a literacy project with a goal to encourage and enhance reading skills by putting age appropriate books into the hands of children served by Family Advocate Program.

When visiting their families in their homes, parent educators educate parents on the importance of reading to children and deliver one book a month for each child in the families they visit, to build a "library" for each child.