Every Child Succeeds Focuses on Expectant Mothers in Avondale

Home Visitation Program to Ensure Healthy Babies and Mothers Kicks Off in January

Monday, January 01, 0001

Based on scientific principles correlating appropriate brain stimulation during the first 3 years of life with the achievement of full social, mental and physical development, Every Child Succeeds (ECS) maximizes the development of high-risk children. For the past seven years, ECS has been supporting these principles with a community program that provides an optimal environment for learning and emotional growth for young women and their children.

Beginning in January, ECS is piloting a community-focused home visitation partnership program especially for Avondale residents. To celebrate the kick-off of the partnership, ECS will be having a ribbon cutting ceremony on Thursday, January 18, 2007 from 10 a.m. until 11 a.m. at Carmel Presbyterian Church, located at 3549 Reading Road. The community office for the Avondale / ECS Partnership will be located at Carmel Presbyterian.

Donella Baskin, Program Coordinator, Avondale / Every Child Succeeds Home Visitation Partnership, said that the Avondale pilot program will provide young first-time mothers the education, resources and support needed to raise their child in an environment that is conducive to a healthy lifestyle. "With this program, young women will receive home visits by a professionally trained social worker several times per month for up to three years and the mothers will receive pre-natal and child development information about pregnancy and parenting," she said.

43 Greater Cincinnati and Hamilton county organizations including the Uptown Consortium, the Avondale Community Council, the Cincinnati Police, Cincinnati Firefighters and a host of others have come together to create the Avondale / Every Child 30 young women and their children who are signed up to participate in the Avondale / Every Child Succeeds Home Visitation Partnership program and recruiting efforts are underway for at least 70 additional participants. Community Action Agency and Beech Acres Parenting Center will be providing services for the partnership program.

An example of the success of the ECS program can be found in their documented infant mortality statistics. The infant mortality rate for the city of Cincinnati is 13.1 per 1000 live births and in Hamilton County it is 9.8 per 1000 live births. In Cincinnati and Hamilton County, the infant mortality rate for African-American babies is 2 to 3 times higher than for Caucasian babies. The infant mortality rate for infants who go through the ECS program is 2.8 per 1000 births. ECS has selected the majority-African-American populated community of Avondale for a more intensive program delivery because the community ranks low on important community health indicators and it has been selected by the United Way of Greater Cincinnati as one of the three locations for their "place matters" Initiative.

In 1999, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati Hamilton County Community Action Agency and the United Way of Greater Cincinnati partnered to create Every Child Succeeds to address the needs of at-risk, first-time mothers and their children in Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky. To date, Every Child Succeeds has served more than 10,000 families with over 200,000 home visits. The afore-mentioned partnering agencies, along with Carmel Presbyterian Church and several other local organizations have worked for the past 11 months to build a framework for the Avondale / Every Child Succeeds Partnership to follow.

The Avondale / Every Child Succeeds Home Visitation Partnership program is available to young women who are pregnant for the first time or who have an infant less than 3 months old who live in Avondale and who meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Single
• Under the age of 18
• Inadequate prenatal care
• Low income

The women who enroll in the Avondale / Every Child Succeeds Home Visitation Partnership program will receive education, ongoing guidance and support in the areas of prenatal care, parental health, child development, immunization, medical home identification and breast-feeding. Every Child Succeeds offers parents a trusting and stable relationship with a child development specialist who can advise her throughout her child's first three years.

Judith Van Ginkel, PhD, President, Every Child Succeeds, said the Avondale / Every Child Succeeds Home Visitation Partnership program is one example of how Every Child Succeeds is making a positive impact on first-time mothers in the Greater Cincinnati area. "The young women who have participated in the Every Child Succeeds program have achieved remarkable outcomes with regard to how they nurture and parent their child. The Avondale Partnership will be no different," she stated. "If you research our [Every Child Succeeds] statistics, you will find that eighty-five percent of mothers experience significant reduction in depression symptoms during the first year they participate in the program," she said. She went on to explain that ninety-nine percent of mothers who go through the program are satisfied with the services they receive. "We know that we will continue to see phenomenal results such as these by initiating a program specifically for young women in the Avondale community," she said.

For more information about the Avondale / Every Child Succeeds Partnership program, please contact Donella Baskin, 513-636-2830.

Cincinnati Children's, one of the top five children's hospitals in the nation according to Child magazine, is a 475-bed institution devoted to bringing the world the joy of healthier kids. Cincinnati Children's is dedicated to providing care that is timely, efficient, effective, family-centered, equitable and safe. For its efforts to transform the way health care is provided, Cincinnati Children's received the 2006 American Hospital Association-McKesson Quest for Quality Prize". Cincinnati Children's ranks second nationally among all pediatric centers in research grants from the National Institutes of Health and is a teaching affiliate of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. The Cincinnati Children's vision is to be the leader in improving child health.