Children's Place Inc. will be implementing a new program to help at-risk families soon, thanks to the generosity of a nearly $750,000 grant from Duke Endowment.
The program, SafeCare, is a research-based service that has been used to help families at risk of trauma in multiple states across the U.S.
Duke Endowment's $743,000 donation over a four-year period will fund the program in several counties serviced by Children's Place, including Aiken County.
"SafeCare will be a part of our therapeutic childcare program serving all of Aiken County and our community-based prevention services," said Peggy Ford, executive director of Children's Place, during a meeting Friday morning at the Aiken Municipal Building. "This investment in our communities by the Duke Endowment represents an infrastructure investment in the future workforce of our communities."
Several local agency representatives and elected officials from the Aiken community were in attendance at the meeting, where employees of Georgia State University spoke about how SafeCare works.
"We work in more than 20 states across the U.S., and we're super excited to kick off our work in South Carolina today," said Shannon Self-Brown, professor and department chair of Health Policy and Behavioral Sciences and co-director of National SafeCare Training and Research Center." SafeCare is an 18-session, home-visiting program where we partner with parents to improve the lives of the families and the children."
Self-Brown said the program focuses on three areas to help improve family relations in the homes of at-risk children ages 0-5. Those areas are: improving parent-relationships with children, increasing home safety to reduce risk of unintentional injury and improving children's overall health.
"It's really about improving the family relationships and improving the trajectory with children," Self-Brown said.
The program served over 8,000 families nationally last year. Self-Brown, who has been working with SafeCare for 12 years, said some risk factors for the program include single-parent homes and homes with parents who have mental illness.
"SafeCare is a research-based program, which means that we've tested it a lot around the country," Self-Brown said. "What we've seen is that families who go through the SafeCare program compared to services as usual have lower child maltreatment risk, improved child wellbeing, the mothers report lower maternal depression, and the program is reported as very culturally relevant."
According to Children's Place staff, training for SafeCare will begin in February. The program will be implemented beginning in March.
