The Healthy Families America Initiative

The Healthy Families America Initiative
Author: Joseph Galano
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2014-04-04
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1135023611

Child abuse and neglect are social and public health problems that need to be addressed by strong policies and dynamic initiatives that show quantifiable results. The Healthy Families America® Initiative: Integrating Research, Theory and Practice is the most up-to-date examination of the home visitation program aimed at preventing child abuse and neglect. This contemporary and comprehensive summary of research and practice contains five empirical articles at the national, state, and multi-state levels, scholarly reviews, insights into Healthy Families America® (HFA) challenges and successes, and commentaries about the next steps for HFA. This detailed study of HFA is a roadmap for prevention efforts of the future, discussing in detail its past and present, the benefits and challenges of researcher/practitioner partnerships, and expert suggestions to improve practice. Healthy Families America is a program that works to help new families give their children a healthy, abuse- and neglect-free environment in which to grow. The Healthy Families America® Initiative: Integrating Research, Theory and Practice looks closely at the research to assess whether or not the program has actually attained its projected goals. This book comprehensively discusses the programs from both micro and macro perspectives, while offering practical strategies to strengthen HFA and guide the next phase of child abuse prevention. This resource also provides several tables to clearly present research data and is extensively referenced. The Healthy Families America® Initiative: Integrating Research, Theory and Practice covers the history of HFA; challenges and successes associated with its expansion as a national prevention initiative; the credentialing process; the evolution of the HFA Research to Practice Network (RPN); information on Every Child Succeeds and Healthy Families Arizona programs, and what makes them work; the theory, research, and practical constraints of developing, implementing, and evaluating a multi-site and statewide HFA program; the Web-based eECS system that optimizes quality assurance and collects data to document and identify clinical needs; an overview of the literature on home visiting outcomes; a current comprehensive summary of HFA outcomes; and suggestions on how to frame child abuse and neglect prevention to best impact citizens and public policy. The Healthy Families America® Initiative: Integrating Research, Theory and Practice is essential reading for professionals involved in child abuse and neglect prevention and treatment, community psychologists, professionals involved in prevention and health promotion, child advocates, HFA’s program evaluators and practitioners, sociologists, and policymakers.

Healthy Start

Healthy Start
Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
Total Pages: 28
Release: 1998
Genre: Infants
ISBN:

Healthy Start Program Perspectives from New Haven Healthy Start Program Participants

Healthy Start Program Perspectives from New Haven Healthy Start Program Participants
Author: Nelly S. Angah
Publisher:
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2015
Genre: Infants
ISBN:

The New Haven Healthy Start Program is a 20-year-old program aiming to reduce infant mortality rates and maternal mortality and morbidity rates in the African American Community in several sites scattered throughout the United States. The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to identify participants' perceptions of the Healthy Start program based in New Haven and to link the initiative goals to its results based on the participants' accounts. The study sample was selected from the city of New Haven: Healthy Start Case Worker offices and shelter sites. The study participants' accounts were collected in a single interview format, consisting of African American women, 18 to 35 years of age, who were clients or former clients of the New Haven HS. The interview questionnaire centered on the following questions: How did the program affect the New Haven Healthy Start clients throughout their lifetimes as program participant? What were the factors that kept the New Haven Healthy Start clients in the program? The results revealed the importance of the Healthy Start workers in the shelter system and in making the program eligible clients adhere to the program by providing the necessary support in and after the shelter. Ultimately, this initiative may strengthen the program evaluation, provide more understanding into the Healthy Start Initiative's poor program outcomes and determine if the initiative from the clients' perspectives targeted their needs and fulfilled its goals.

Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research

Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research
Author: Sally K. Ward
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2014-05-22
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1317719999

Understand and evaluate family violence programs for your community! Twenty years ago, the major issue in creating interventions to prevent domestic violence was persuading the courts, the funding agencies, and society that domestic violence was a serious problem worthy of time, trouble, and money. Now that the importance of domestic violence has been established, we need safe and effective ways to evaluate those interventions to see which ones are working and how they can be improved. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research brings together some of the best minds in the field discussing such vital evaluation issues as policy implications, alternative designs for evaluation studies, and ethical concerns. This comprehensive book approaches the vexed question of evaluation with compassion as well as scientific rigor. Clearly, traditional double-blind studies and control groups are difficult to conduct when family violence is the subject; it is ethically indefensible to sit back and watch abusers hurt their mates or children when interventions are available. Yet finding usable methods of program evaluation is also essential. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research confronts these questions and discusses practical ways to evaluate a variety of domestic violence programs. Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research draws on years of experience to address the difficult questions raised, including: going beyond evaluating program effectiveness to analyze why and how interventions help change behavior creating new research designs to adapt to the unique concerns of the family violence field using meta-analysis for program evaluation research determining the interaction between research and program results identifying barriers between community activists and social scientists that may impede research Program Evaluation and Family Violence Research offers fresh and creative ways to do program evaluations, guarantee subjects’physical and emotional safety, and make good science humane.