Healthy Families
The DRU Healthy Families program provides in-home support services to pregnant women and families with children from infancy to three years old living in the Druid Heights, Reservoir Hill, Upton and Mondawmin communities. Mothers are encouraged to enroll before their babies reach three months old. Healthy Families continues to provide services to enrolled families until children reach the age of five. Healthy Families home visitors provide parenting support information, information and connections to needed services.
Healthy Start
Baltimore City Healthy Start provides intensive outreach, client recruitment, case management, and health education to pregnant and post-partum. The program operates two sites, one in East Baltimore near JHU Hospital and one in West Baltimore in Sandtown-Winchester / Harlem Park. Neighborhood advocates and health professional provide outreach services, home-visiting services, family planning services and health referrals for participating mothers.
http://www.fcsmd.org/programs/druhealthyfamilies/
Countdown to Kindergarten
http://mdchildcare.org/ctk/readytosucceed.html
Baltimore City's Countdown to Kindergarten (CTKB) is a campaign to promote school readiness and awareness about the importance of early childhood experience from birth to five years. It capitalizes on all the good work already going on and taps into the great potential in all of us to do more.
Through community-based outreach and media efforts, this initiative will:
-
Increase public understanding about the importance of learning in the early years
-
Provide parents, other caregivers and community stakeholders, with practical, "actionable" information along with the inspiration and support to follow through
-
Build the political will among the general public to make the necessary investments in programs that benefit young children.
On both the State level and in Baltimore City , leadership groups have convened to "jumpstart" school readiness. Funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Leadership in Action programs have developed and are promoting plans for accelerating school readiness.
A private/public partnership has been formed to conduct a major, statewide public engagement media and grassroots campaign about early learning and the importance of early childhood experience. The campaign in Baltimore City dovetails with the statewide initiative - combining efforts under the banner Countdown to Kindergarten: Learning Begins at Birth.
Working together the state and city campaigns strengthen the work of both and give each the capacity to reach more broadly and therefore more effectively. Leaders of both initiatives believe they have a unique opportunity - based on shared commitment to improving outcomes for children - to create a powerful model of state/local collaboration that can move both public opinion and private behavior regarding the nurture of our children.
For further information about Countdown to Kindergarten Baltimore, contact: Deitre Epps at 410-662-5500, Ext. 231
To find out more about early language and literacy groups in Baltimore , call: Diane Banchiere at 410-662-5500
For more information about the state Countdown to Kindergarten campaign and for information and resources to help parents and early child caregivers, call: Jennifer Williams at 410-752-7588 or visit the website at www.countdownmd.org .
