Blog #8 Healthy Families Arkansas helps young mothers achieve stability

 Healthy Families Arkansas helps young mothers achieve stability

This article is more on the side of things that have been done right or efforts that have been put into helping and insuring the success of families in today's world.  The article talked about an origination Healthy Families Arkansas a branch of Healthy Families Americais geared towards a whole family approach to ensuring success for new young parents.  Not only does the origination do home visits to ensure tings are going well after the arrival of a new bundle of joy but with the "whole family approch" the group is also providing services such as how to care for oneself during pregnancy,how to soothe a crying baby, how to ensure a child is receiving the right nutrition, how to promote healthy child development and bonding, and how to create a safe home environment.  All of this things are paramount important to any new mother but is even more a vital skill to new young mothers.  This type of more readily available help insures not only better care by the mother but a more positive out come for the child.  The program also formally focused on helping and expressing the importance of continued education for these mothers and as this is still a priority, the new integrated skill sets of the organization insure that these mothers will have the tools to manage but a family life and a work school life.  The program is free and voluntary geared to 12-25 year olds and currently is working off grants to be able to provide these services.  Programs like these in communities continue to sprout up all over the country and the need for them is being seen in the numbers of those using this unique resource.  For me this is the type of planning that is necessary for the positive growth of our countries families and should be more widely implemented.  Programs like this don't just touch the lives of the mothers but offer a more positive cumulative advantage to the infant giving them and their mothers a better starting place and reduced stress levels due to the support and the education to really succeed. 

 REPOST from 10/27/12 (didnt post the first time due to unknown technical difficulties)

11/1/12 Andrea N Ward 7:08



http://www.paragoulddailypress.com/articles/2012/11/01/local_news/doc50928d0903581209377210.txt