More than half a million children are born every year in California. Each child has an unlimited amount of potential – to grow-up healthy, to do well in school and to succeed. FIRST 5 believes in tapping into that potential during a child’s earliest years and working to ensure that all children are given the opportunity to thrive.

FIRST 5 Santa Clara County invests more than $30 million of Proposition 10 tobacco tax money each year to create a future where all children in Santa Clara County are healthy, have proper educational opportunities and are raised in safe and nurturing environments. We work on making this happen by focusing our efforts in four areas:

• Building a Supportive Family
• Helping to Raise Healthy Children
• Preparing Children to Learn
• Connecting with the Community

Building a Supportive Family

Family Partner Program
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Family Partners help families with their child’s development, assist them in creating a Child/Family Success Plan and securing appropriate services.

Home Visitation Services
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FIRST 5’s Home Visitation Program provides support, guidance and coaching to parents and caregivers in a child’s home environment.

FIRST 5 Parenting Workshops
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FIRST 5 parenting workshops strengthen families’ knowledge and competencies in child-rearing practices, coping skills, ability to access needed resources, plus build and enrich families’ knowledge of positive parenting techniques.

Therapeutic Services
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Emotional and behavior problems often start early in childhood and get progressively worse if not treated. Through a partnership with the Department of Mental Health and community based organizations, FIRST 5 supports a continuum of child and family therapeutic interventions and treatment services.

Court Initiative
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FIRST 5 and its partner agencies work with identified courts to provide services and support for families in which young children are developmentally suffering or at-risk of suffering from emotional/physical abuse and high conflict and/or high-risk behaviors by their parents/caregivers.

Differential Response
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FIRST 5 works in partnership with the Social Services Agency, Department of Family and Children’s Services, to implement an effective alternative, community response for children birth through age 5.

Helping to Raise Healthy Children

FIRST 5 STARTS
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FIRST 5 STARTS is a coordinated community Screening, To Assessment, Referral and Treatment Services system for children birth through age 5. This program identifies developmental delays early on, which leads to children receiving proper treatment.

Children’s Health Initiative (CHI)

CHI strives to achieve 100% health insurance coverage for children living in Santa Clara County. CHI has significantly expanded enrollment in federal, state, and local health insurance programs such as Medi-Cal, Healthy Kids and Healthy Families.

Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Collaborative
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Early childhood obesity has become an epidemic that our community can no longer ignore. With this in mind, FIRST 5 convened the Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Collaborative in June 2007, Co-Chaired by Dr. Dan Delgado, Director of the Pediatric Healthy Lifestyle Center at Valley Medical Center. A Policy Workgroup was also formed out of the Collaborative, which is chaired by Santa Clara County Supervisor Ken Yeager.

Preparing Children to Learn

Power of Preschool (PoP)
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Power of Preschool (PoP) is a high quality, free, voluntary, part-day preschool program for 3 and 4 year old children living in communities with high levels of cumulative risk and the lowest Academic Performance Index (API) schools in Santa Clara County. The goal of PoP is to help children develop personal, social, emotional and physical competence to become effective learners and be ready to transition into kindergarten.

Family Resource Centers
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High-quality Family Resource Centers (FRC) integrate health, education, and arts enrichment to promote school readiness, early literacy development, and overall well-being of children and families.

Connecting with the Community

Community Engagement and Awareness
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Recognizing the rich geographic, socio-economic and linguistic diversity of our county, FIRST 5 Santa Clara County engages and educates the community about the importance of the first 5 years of a child’s life.

FIRST 5 Community of Learning
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The Community of Learning (COL) is a cross-disciplinary training institute that creates and strengthens a workforce of professionals and community members on best practices regarding the developmental needs of young children and their families.

Community Partnerships
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Nine Community Partnerships throughout Santa Clara County serve children prenatal through age 5, while ensuring support for children in each community who have cumulative risk factors.

Communications Strategy
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Multicultural radio programs are hosted in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian, and African languages (Tigrinya and Amharic) on various educational topics for young children and their families.