![[Back to Home
Page]](../starting_points/gifs/home.gif)
Project Description:
Baltimore's civic, business, and community leaders, convened by Mayor Kurt Schmoke, have developed a comprehensive plan to implement the Starting Points recommendations in several inner city neighborhoods where families often struggle to provide for their young children. Drawing on a unique collaboration with the federally funded Empowerment Zone that provides employment and economic development incentives to its most financially distressed neighborhoods, Baltimore plans to develop needed parent support, child health, and early education programs that may help transform these communities.
Baltimore has already invested significant resources in giving its youngest children a decent start: its nationally recognized Healthy Start initiative is credited with improving health outcomes for the pregnant women and children it reaches. The Baltimore project will strengthen and expand Healthy Start's home visiting, family planning services, and parenting education for all families with young children and leverage additional child care in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood of West Baltimore, building upon the Empowerment Zone's support for economic development, housing, and employment. A high-quality early Head Start program will also be developed to serve families in Sandtown-Winchester, and the Baltimore Child Care Resource Center will identify, recruit, and train new family child care providers in a Healthy Start target neighborhood in West Baltimore as well as in East Baltimore. Working with the Baltimore City Health Department, the resource center will also conduct violence prevention and conflict resolution workshops to help reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect.
Baltimore will conduct an ongoing evaluation of its Starting Points initiative under a contract with the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. The evaluation will also inform the work of the Ready At Five Partnership that is developing public education and policy linkage activities to ensure that all Maryland's children enter school ready to learn. The Partnership has issued "Starting Points in Maryland," identifying strategies to improve the quality of life for young children across the state.
The Baltimore City Health Department manages this initiative, and most of the matching funds are being provided by Baltimore's Healthy Start program.
Major Program Components:
Contact:
Thomas P. Coyle
Assistant Commissioner
Baltimore City Healthy Start Inc.
Maternal, Infant Care & Special Projects
210 Guilford Avenue, Second Floor
Baltimore, MD 21202-3698
Tel: 410/396-9994, Fax: 410/347-7602
E-mail: N/A
Back
to Starting Points Home Page
Starting Points Web: http://www.carnegie.org/startingpoints
Starting Points E-mail:
startingpoints@carnegie.org