Program Description

Healthy Families Arizona (HFAz) is designed to help expectant and new parents get their children off to a healthy start. Families that choose to voluntarily participate after meeting specific criteria, receive home visits and referrals from trained staff. Program services are designed to strengthen families during the critical first years of a child’s life – the time when early brain development occurs, laying the foundation for a lifetime of memories, behaviors, and outcomes. Through its efforts to support and educate families, the program has shown to reduce incidences of child abuse and neglect, provide stability for at-risk families and has grown a new generation of healthy families in the state. Intensity of services is based on each family’s needs, beginning weekly and moving gradually to quarterly home visits as families become more self-sufficient. Healthy Families services may continue if needed until the child turns five years old.

HFAz program goals are to:

• enhance positive parent/child interaction
• promote child health and development
• prevent child abuse and neglect

Program Services

HFAz services include:

• providing emotional support and encouragement to parents
• teaching and supporting appropriate parent-child interaction and discipline
• providing periodic developmental screenings and referrals if delayed
• linking families with community services, health care, child care, and housing
• encouraging self-sufficiency through education and employment
• providing child development, nutrition, and safety education

Clinical support is available for staff consultation on difficult issues. Intensity of services is based on each family’s needs, from weekly to quarterly home visits as families become more self-sufficient. Healthy Families services may continue if needed until the child turns five years old.

Program Eligibility

1. The infant must be under three months of age at enrollment
2. Pregnant women and parents of newborns who have life stressors that might lead to bad outcomes for their children
3. Stressors might include:

• Poverty, unemployment, lack of education, lack of health insurance
• Lack of prenatal care, low birth weight of baby
• High life stressors, single or teen parenthood
• Having a baby with special needs or disabilities
• History of abuse or neglect as a child
• Social isolation, lack of available friends and family for support
• Substance abuse, domestic violence, or mental health

If you are a parent or work with a pregnant woman or family of a newborn under the age of 3 months, with any of the risk factor and stressors mentioned, make a referral to the HFAz program or contact the Statewide Coordinator