Grantee

The Parent-Child Home Program, National Center
Port Washington, Long Island, NY

Grant amount

$75,000

About the program

For over 40 years, The Parent-Child Home Program has been helping families with limited resources prepare their children for school success. These families face challenges such as poverty, limited education, language and literacy barriers, or other obstacles, and their children might otherwise be unprepared to learn in a school environment. The goal of the program is to help parents prepare their children for school on both an educational and an emotional level, and help ensure they become successful students.

The Parent-Child Home Program helps families to create language-rich, stimulating home environments that prepare their children to enter school ready-to-learn and ready-to-succeed. The Program’s Home Visitors help parents realize their role as their child’s first and most important teacher. Through the use of engaging books and stimulating toys, they help parents create a home environment full of enthusiasm for learning and verbal interaction.

Grant Objectives

The Rauch Foundation Grant will enable The Parent-Child Home Program to increase the capacity of its National Center, and double the number of families it serves from 6,000 to 12,000 over the next five years. The National Center supports 150 (and growing) sites around the US and will now be able to increase their staff, improve their systems and enhance their technology to better serve families in need.

An Innovative Approach

Typically, The Parent-Child Home Program serves children who are between the ages of two and four. By reaching children at the preschool level, they focus on prevention rather than intervention. The Parent-Child Home Program strives to reach children in the place where the most important early learning occurs — in the home.

Every Parent-Child Home Program site uses a carefully developed and well-tested model to ensure quality services and consistent results. Through twice-weekly home sessions with the parent (or primary caregiver) and the child, the Home Visitor models verbal interaction and reading and play activities, demonstrating how to use books and toys to cultivate language and facilitate literacy skills to help promote school readiness. By using a non-directive approach of modeling behaviors rather than teaching behaviors, parents are encouraged and empowered to continue quality play and reading between visits. This allows them the become their child’s most important teacher and take pride in their commitment to, and impact on, their child’s education.

For more information about the Parent-Child Home Program visit www.parent-child.org .