Grantees

A home visiting program for families attending The Family Place with a mental health slant on the visits.

We are creating a program to implement targeted Family Support. Our Family Support specialist will have continuous engagement with all our families, support families if they need assistance with child care subsidy applications, help support families facing housing crisis, food insecurities, reach out to local community partners on behalf of the family to ensure they are getting the support needed from each agency they work with or want to be involved with. The Family Support Specialist will schedule and do outreach events with our center and families with the intentional purpose that our families will feel close and connected to our center, their child’s teacher and our Family Support Specialist.

A program for girls and their fathers to spend time together. At the end of the year there is a father/daughter dance.

The purpose of this grant is to provide program support and to sustain outreach efforts aimed at recruiting, training and supporting volunteers in the Bradford, VT area and towns in Windsor County. Trained volunteers help to strengthen families of newborns during those first 3 months following birth by "pitching in" in any way the mother wants, relieving the isolation and exhaustion that new mothers often feel.

A program for parents on how to be well, physically and emotionally.

Healthy Families from the Start provides prenatal and postpartum support outside of the traditional social services sector for new parents who are assessed as at risk by local health care providers. This program provides new parents with online and home-based groups, visits, and education from pregnancy through the first 12 weeks postpartum. Both birthing and non-birthing parents receive wrap around care that seamlessly transitions into existing Family Room playgroups and programs as children age. Thanks to our partnership with the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, the majority of families served include former refugees, asylees, and immigrants.

Support for at-risk new parents is vital to creating safe and secure families who raise resilient children. The system in Vermont is divided in two: those who can pay for supports are able to access doulas, child care, playgroups, and child development classes; and those who can’t pay instead rely on the child welfare services. As a result, those who most need continuous, reliable, and nurturing support have the least access to it. Through our Healthy Families from the Start program, we provide prenatal and postpartum doula support for higher-risk families in Chittenden County. We offer online and home-based groups, home visits, education, doula support, and concrete supports from pregnancy through the first 12 weeks postpartum.

To provide home visiting and support to new parents in the Bradford area of Vermont.