Fair Start for Children: Lessons Learned from Seven Demonstration Projects

Infant mortality, low birth weight, developmental problems: all these affect America's children of poverty out of proportion to their numbers in the population. This book is a comprehensive, objective report on an initiative designed to alleviate these problems by helping disadvantaged parents in seven diverse American communities improve the health, nutrition, and early development of their children.
Between 1982 and 1989, a Ford Foundation grants program called Child Survival/A Fair Start for Children worked with barrio families in Texas, young black mothers in rural Alabama, isolated Appalachian families, Mexican-American farmworkers living in south Florida camps, recent Haitian immigrants, adolescent parents in several cities, and Caribbean residents of a crowded neighborhood in New York City on issues related to infant health and development. All seven projects were staffed by trained paraprofessionals from the community who had themselves faced many of the problems confronting the participants. Individual chapters on each of the seven projects describe the concerns and living conditions of the families served; the project objectives, curriculum, and staff; the methods and findings of project evaluation; and the program elements continued in the community after the initial funding ended. Several concluding chapters provide a cross-project view of the process of program implementation, the costs of the services, and the overall effectiveness of the program.
The book offers practical information that will be of immediate use to any agency, public or private, seeking to improve the health and development of babies born to poor families. At the same time, it makes it clear that not all poor families are the same - an important lesson for all interventionists and policymakers.