First 5, a collection of early family support services, focuses on building healthy families, getting children ready for school, and partnering with parents on their path to be their child’s first teacher.
Program Director Jordan Sosa said they have three evidence-based programs.
“We have PAT, Parents as Teachers, which focuses on child development, building positive parenting strategies and dynamics within the family. Nurse Family Partnership is NFP. There are licensed nurses. They serve first-time pregnant mothers and support (them) through the journey of pregnancy, having a newborn,” Sosa said.
“They support with breastfeeding and all that comes along with having a new baby. And then HIPPY, or Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters … serves kiddos ages 3 to 5 so that’s kind of our school readiness program,” she added.
HIPPY focuses on a lot of the skills children will need when they get to kindergarten, as well as supporting their parents, being able to advocate for their children when they get to school and working with their children once they’re doing school-based assignments.
“They … include that parent-child interaction dynamic as well. That’s kind of what First 5 does as a whole. We’re also very involved in the community. The kind of local family support-early childhood space and being a collaborative partner with other agencies to move the needle forward on improving early childhood outcomes, family health outcomes and overall public health kinds of outcomes in our community,” Sosa said.
First 5 serves about 350 families and about 300 through outside initiatives like Kinder Camp and Roll and Read.
First 5 will hold Kinder Camp this year. There were changes because of the COVID-19 pandemic and it went virtual.
“Now we’re kind of in the transition back to what we would like camp to be like with an increased focus on the parent-child interaction component of it so that parents can work on the activities with their children and they can come on campus to events. That’s kind of what the formatting was last year, but we’re looking to start getting some concrete ideas for that,” Sosa said.
It will be held in mid-to-late summer.
HIPPY oversees Kinder Camp.
“They’re working through those initial planning stages. … It had virtual and in-person components and there was a really good feedback on that dynamic. … We wanted the parents to be able to do it versus just dropping them off,” Sosa said.
“They still got to do the activities, but we actually had a field day on campus so they got to come up and do PE … activities and have … a little end of camp celebration; so nothing concrete, but we’re … in the planning stages for that to be the dynamic for this year,” she added.
The Nurse Family Partnership Program is trying to focus on first-time moms who may need the services the most.
“There’s been a focus by the state of Texas that there is a need for pregnant foster youth who need access to services. That’s kind of a new component. We’re trying to reach that population and see how much of a need that is in our community and starting communications with that,” Sosa said.
Within each community across Texas, you partner with agencies that serve foster youth and get conversation started on how to support those new moms.
“Because if they’re in foster care, they’re under the age of 18. They have limited access to other resources and so how to support them to limit barriers to their success there,” Sosa said.
First Five is really committed to being a partner to others in the early childhood space, she added.
“We’re working alongside many (organizations) like the Education Partnership and other partners that do some data collection efforts on our community. We’re collecting information on home literacy and what that means in our community — what the value is of having books in the home for community members; how often they read to children,” Sosa said.
“There’s data that says that reading, talking, playing, singing with your kids helps them to evolve their vocabulary and then build skills so that they’re ready for school. We’re working on those kinds of initiatives to really assess what’s going on in our community and what we can do to support that,” she added.
In addition to the activities and education that they get with their partner peers, they also can get things like emergency supplies such as diapers, wipes, prepaid and grocery gift cards.
“Anything that we can do to help the family as a whole so they can focus more on their … educational goals and things like that for their children,” Assistant Director Mercedes Ojeda said.
First 5 is entirely funded by grants and offers free services to program families.
“We are grateful for our funders and our partners that make us make it possible … for us to serve families in the way that we do,” Sosa said.
She added that First 5 is lucky to be part of the university.
“We work alongside UTPB’s advancement office to pursue relationships with foundations and partners whose missions we can support and who have a focus on the health of families and early childhood education and things like that,” Sosa said.
Most of a child’s brain development happens between birth and age 5.
“We really want to partner with parents to be able to support their children in that most critical time. If that means limiting barriers like access to food, then great. If it means providing education related to child development, then good. We really want to just walk alongside them … the journey of becoming a new parent and getting your children ready for school and things like that to create touch points …,” Sosa added.
“… We want to create opportunities to be able to strengthen that with the hopes of overall improving the kind of quality of life for people that live in our area,” Sosa said.
>> On the net: tinyurl.com/mr4297pc
