Home Visits for Stay-At-Home Parents

Our home visit program for stay-at-home parents provides low-income parents with home visits to help them learn more about child development. Initial visits work on the creation of a healthy and strong mother-child relationship, using Dr. Terry Brazelton's Touchpoints approach. Later visits emphasize early literacy skills, drawing on the highly-regarded Baby Talk curriculum

How We Help
Because many high risk families were not being reached by the traditional means of delivering parent education services, First Chance for Children pioneered a novel modification of the Parents as Teachers program (PAT) called "PAT Plus." Our model more heavily emphasizes outreach, permits more flexibility in arranging home visits, focuses more heavily on fostering mother-child attachment, works with families on setting goals, and reduces the caseloads carried by parent educators. Our parent educators are also able to offer incentives, like diapers and books, to increase enrollment and retention.

We also provide funds to four local school districts so that they can hire their own “PAT Plus” educators who will use our intensive model of parent services. PAT Plus educators now work for the public schools in Boonville, Centralia, Columbia and Fayette.

Funding
This program is made possible by funding from the Missouri Department of Social Services through direct funding and through a partnership with the Boone County Community Partnership