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Project Description:
To address the pressing needs of families with young children, Governor Zell Miller established the Georgia Initiative for Children and Families to coordinate services, streamline government, and create a more responsive and flexible system. To implement programs for young children on a statewide basis, private foundations and the state have also invested $14 million over the past three years in the development of the Family Connection, which operates comprehensive service initiatives in fifty-six communities. Last year, Georgia earmarked $150 million in state lottery funds for the nation's first universal prekindergarten program for four-year-olds.
Georgia's Starting Points project will focus on implementing and evaluating a model system of family contact and support that has been designed by state and local public health specialists in consultation with community organizations and parents. The model is expected to assess all families for needed health and social supports at the time of birth and to track the progress of those at highest risk until the child's third birthday. The assessment of resources and needs of the families of all newborns will begin before the mother leaves the hospital and will continue in the community. Families will be referred to appropriate health care, parenting support, child care, and employment services.
The model system will be tested in two counties, Paulding and Dougherty, and in one Empowerment Zone neighborhood in the City of Atlanta. In Paulding and Dougherty, ongoing Family Connection collaborative work with community leaders, health and social service organizations, and families forms the basis for enhanced health care and human services and home visiting follow-up for new families. In Atlanta, the Mayor's Bureau of Human Services is developing a family service center approach to reaching families with new infants in one neighborhood.
The Georgia Policy Council for Children and Families, launched by Governor Zell Miller and established by the state legislature in 1995, has chosen twenty-six benchmarks for the state to target to improve the status of child health and development and family functioning. The Starting Points evaluation will examine aspects of these benchmarks that relate to children birth to three, and the processes which communities use in implementing the Model System. The Policy Council is using Georgia's Starting Points as the first statewide strategy for early and periodic contact with families of young children and will extract findings that will be useful to other Georgia communities. The state's Department of Human Resources manages the Starting Points project; the Department of Human Resources and the City of Atlanta provide matching funds.
Major Program Components:
Contact:
Judy H. Bodner, M.S., R.D.
Coordinator, Starting Points Initiative for Georgia
Center for Family Resource Planning and Development
Family Health Branch, Division of Public Health
Georgia Department of Human Resources
2600 Skyland Drive, NE
Upper Level, Room 5
Atlanta, GA 30319
Tel: 404/679-0531, Fax: 404/679-0686
E-mail: jhb044e@ph.dhr.state.ga.us
Web: http://www.ph.dhr.state.ga.us
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