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Kent Co. Collaborative Gets $250K Home Visitation Grant

About 600 Michigan families will receive personal attention to get their young children ready for school.  This, from the Michigan Department of Education.  The department’s Office of Great Start announced that 15 Great Start Collaboratives have been awarded state Home Visitation grants.  One of those collaboratives is located in Kent County. 

“Our goal is to make sure that all children, birth to age eight, especially those in highest need, have access to high quality early learning, development programs and enter kindergarten and arrive at that first day of school prepared for success.”

State Department of Education officials says Home visitation programs provide an essential resources to at-risk and high-need families in Michigan.  The Kent County Great Start Collaborative was just awarded close to 250-thousand dollars in grant money for expanded home visitation services.  Here’s Paula Brown, Director of Great Start Collaborative in Kent County.

A home visiting service brings a caring professional right to your doorstep.  Parents are matched with someone to provide information and support during pregnancy and throughout their child’s first years which is a very critical time period in that child’s life.”

Brown says the home visiting services can help during those critical developmental periods.

“These programs provide essential programs to families.  Such programs promote engagement in their children’s education and development. And they’re find research that shows investment into our children early on can promote school readiness, promote parent’s ability to promote student development, improve child health and development early on.”

Paula says for more information on the Home Visitation Services, you can email them at referral@firststepskent.org.

Jennifer is an award winning broadcast news journalist with more than two decades of professional television news experience including the nation's fifth largest news market. She's worked as both news reporter and news anchor for television and radio in markets from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo all the way to San Francisco, California.