
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, April 14, 1994                   TAG: 9404140308
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By PEGGY BALLA and BRENDA COBBS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HELPING HANDS FOR KIDS' HEALTH

WE'RE WRITING to thank you for keeping children's issues prominent in the media. Your concern and advocacy is certainly evident and greatly appreciated by everyone at the Child Health Investment Partnership.

The March 30 editorial (``Time for an earlier Head Start'') about trying to reach children and their families at the earliest possible time brought to mind services that CHIP has been providing since 1988.

CHIP was founded by community leaders who saw the importance of family involvement as the key to assuring a healthy future for children. Those who laid the foundation for CHIP were pediatricians who saw children return to emergency rooms for treatment of minor illnesses. They were public-health professionals who saw the same children with untreated dental and vision problems identified in school-health screenings year after year. They were also community-action workers and social-service providers who saw families in decline, families facing enormous barriers to obtaining resources and skills to provide the best care for their children.

Well before the Department of Health and Human Services was talking about expanding services to younger children, this community was doing it. Based in part on the home-based Head Start model, this public-private partnership provides comprehensive, integrated and continuous supportive services to children, from birth to entrance into elementary school - services that enhance their social, intellectual, emotional and physical development. CHIP's design offers services that enhance a parent's ability to contribute to their children's healthy development and to help them achieve economic and social self-sufficiency.

CHIP's family-intervention specialists conduct needs assessments to assist families in identifying goals. They also conduct educational home visits for children, from birth to 3 years of age. These visits focus on helping parents learn more effective ways to parent so children can reach their maximum potential during the critical formative stages of development, thus helping to ensure school readiness.

Although CHIP's long-term benefits are immeasurable at this time, the literature is very clear about the benefits of family support on children's growth and development. CHIP emphasizes prevention, which is consistent with concepts currently being discussed in health-care reform and in discussions dealing with health costs and delivery of health-care services. Care coordination and family-intervention services are critical elements of CHIP, and we're in a perfect position to be the model for delivering services for the zero-to-3 age population.

Currently, however, CHIP's able to serve only 20 percent of the eligible population of children (birth to 6 years of age) residing in the Roanoke Valley. We desperately need money to serve the unserved children on our waiting list, which now stands at the alarming number of 1,335. Facing a $207,000 deficit for fiscal year 1995, we know the wait will be too long for some of these children.

Peggy Balla is executive director and Brenda Cobbs is nursing supervisor for the Child Health Investment Partnership of Roanoke.

by CNB