This is Public Health: Parents as Teachers

Parents as Teachers (PAT) is an evidenced-based home visiting program that Lake County Public Health has implemented into their home visiting program. PAT helps organizations and professionals work with parents during the critical early years of their children’s lives, from conception to 3 years old — and the results are powerful.

We help develop our parents’ roles: Grounded in the latest research, Parents as Teachers develops curricula that supports parents’ roles in promoting school readiness and healthy development of children. Our approach is intimate and relationship-based. We embrace learning experiences that are relevant and customized for the individual needs of each family and child. As a result, individuals who are followed in our program benefit from our understanding of the evolving needs of today’s families and children.

We educate our parents: Our program is successful only when we effectively meet the needs of the children and families we serve. We integrate health, education and community referrals easily into our visits. We know our parents serve a broad and diverse population, so our education addresses the developmental needs of any child, including the most vulnerable. We offer practical, hands-on applications for parents in real world situations.

We advocate for our children and families: We champion for early intervention and parental involvement and serve as a unified voice for early childhood education and healthy child development. We raise awareness around evidence-based practice, which supports the importance of enhancing school readiness by reaching children during the critical, formative years of life.

We set high standards: Our commitment to research and quality drives our program. We are committed to evidenced-based research in order to offer the most relevant information and tools to foster early childhood development and educational activities that our parents can use. The efforts of our work help our parents to positively impact their children during their most critical, early years of life.

Lake County Public Health currently serves 64 tribal and non-tribal clients, among those families, twenty are pregnant women and forty-four are children 0-3 years old. Since we implemented the Parents as Teachers program in mid October 2011 we have completed 174 visits.

We are supported by many collaborating community agencies that provide a growing support system for our clients. Among those agencies are service organizations, educational partners, local businesses, faith-based organizations, and law enforcement. We are excited to be able to offer our program throughout Lake County. For more information call Diane @883-7373.