In February, we are celebrating the first anniversary of the Cayuga/Seneca Community Action Agency's Healthy Families Cayuga/ Seneca program funded by New York State's Office for Children and Family Services' Healthy Families New York. We celebrate because more than 100 families have already benefited from the program and hundreds more will benefit in the coming years.

The participating families voluntarily enrolled in the program when they were pregnant or had an infant less than 3 months of age and met additional screening criteria. By enrolling in the program, these families choose to learn about child development, strengthen their support systems, develop goals, and take steps towards achieving their goals. Through this process, Healthy Families Cayuga/ Seneca families build self-sufficiency and learn how to give our children the foundation they need to lead healthy, well-adjusted lives. The program also provides critical reinforcement (counseling, job training, accountability, etc.) that helps parents/caregivers stay employed, become employed or reduce personal and family tension during periods of unemployment.

Why are programs such as Healthy Families so important for our community? Children make up only 25 percent of our population but they are 100 percent of our future. In recent years, New York state's governor and legislators recognized the relationship between healthy families and healthy communities and chose to invest in children's services through programs such as Healthy Families Cayuga/ Seneca. In these times of budget cuts and financial difficulties, continued investment in children's services is critical to the long-term viability of New York's communities.

Consider these facts:

€ 85 percent of a child's brain development takes place before age 5; the years from 0-5 are a critically important opportunity that we must take advantage of by strengthening our families, supporting our youngest learners, and eliminating child abuse and neglect so that children can succeed in school and in life. Healthy Families Cayuga/Seneca's services are designed to strengthen families during the first five years of a child#'s life when most early brain development occurs.

€ New York state spends more than $2.5 billion per year dealing with the consequences of child abuse and only $23 million on home-visiting programs that are proven to prevent child abuse and neglect. Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that studies children at every stage of development declared Healthy Families New York “an effective program, a program that works” in 2007.

Healthy Families Cayuga/ Seneca program services include: linking families with community services, health care, child care, and housing; encouraging self-sufficiency through education and employment; modeling effective parent-child interactions; providing child development, nutrition, and safety education; and providing emotional support and encouragement to parents.

If you would like more information about the Healthy Families Cayuga/Seneca program or know a pregnant woman or a family with an infant younger than 3 months of age who may be interested in the program, contact us at 283-2030 in Cayuga County or 539-5647 in Seneca County.

Marcia Ford is the director of the Healthy Families Cayuga/Seneca program for Cayuga/Seneca Community Action Agency. She can be reached at C/SCAA at 283-2030