ECIC

"... we always wanted to have a home visiting program so that we could be at the very beginning of things."

The Home Visiting Program



Establishing the Home Visits

								“ One goal that we've been very instrumental in is trying to establish a home-visiting program for the four communities. We also needed to tag up with our local Family Resources Center, which is kind of left alone out to the side, and together with the Council and the Resource Center we were able to write for a grant through the CAP Fund to establish a home-visiting program. ”



Finding the Opportunity

								“ I'm Anita Hallman-Kowalski, and I ... coordinate the Family Life Center at Saint Stephens. Our main focus is child abuse prevention: we want to get there before the problems happen. In my work we always wanted to have a home visiting program so that we could be at the very beginning of things. Through the Interagency Council I found out they were investigating the Parents As Teachers Program to see how that would go together. So I jumped in there and said "Hey, we've been waiting for a home visiting program, is there a way that we can work together?" And so we did. We walked through the Parents As Teachers model to see how it would fit, how it would work. Since, South Milwaukee, Cudahy, St. Francis, and Oak Creek are part of our area, we thought it would work very well with us." ”
				Coordinator Family Life Center



A Resource for Parents

								“The Parents As Teachers Program is a home visiting program that takes a visitor to the house to help them with their parenting. It's not as if we're going to see if their children are sick or do the health part; that part gets referred to the Health Department. We are strictly working with their parenting. So the visitor will take in age-appropriate activities and say to the parent "Have you thought about using these ordinary things around your house to make things with your kids and play games with your kids using that?" It doesn't cost a lot of money, and whatever...While they're there, they can see if the kids are developmentally progressing as they should. If not, then we have places we can refer them for screenings and things like that. It's really a very helpful program; we get referrals from "Supporting Today's Parents", from Family Services, from Social Workers, people who are in touch with families. We do a lot of first-time-parent visits.”



Expanding the Services

								“ That home visiting program has now expanded, so now we're looking at education, programs for childcare providers in the community, education programs for parents, families, and caregivers in the community, the home visiting, as well as playgroups. That's one project that we were able to start this year. Another thing is that we found that we were all duplicating in-services and education programs, sometimes doing the same things in the same month. So we put together a calendar of events...we're working on that right now. We looked at each other and said "wow, our first step needs to be to put a web page up so that we can all access it, add to it, and make it available to the community. We're in the process right now of establishing that web page design”