A $2 million dollar grant has been awarded to Georgia State’s School of Public Health to propel the prevention of child abuse and neglect, according to Phys Org.
The grant will support SafeCare, a program providing 60-90 minute weekly home visits to families who are at-risk or reported to have physical abuse or child neglect, according to National SafeCare Training and Research Center’s (NSTRC) fact sheet.
Daniel Whitaker, School of Public Health Professor and Director of NSTRC, said the grant will help reduce child maltreatment by disseminating SafeCare’s evidenced-based parenting program.
“Most child welfare practices done in the US are not evidence-based. They’ve never been scientifically studied,” he said. “SafeCare has been shown to reduce repeat maltreatment compared to such services.”
The sites for implementation haven’t been selected yet, but will be chosen based on a competitive process, according to Whitaker.
SafeCare lasts eighteen weeks and provide a health module, home safety module and parent-child/ parent-infant interaction module, the NSTRC fact sheet states.
The NSTRC fact sheet also states the health module gives families knowledge about children’s illnesses. The home safety module informs parents about the 10 categories of safety hazards.
SafeCare instructs parents and guardians how to interact with their child in order to prevent challengening behaviors through the parent-child or parent-infant interactions module, according to the fact sheet.
The grant is a four-year grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
“… To produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used,” AHRQ’s mission states.
