Child First
Child First provides mental health intervention and support services through a proven home visiting model that builds and strengthens relationships between caregivers and their children. As a two-generation model, Child First partners with families to address the challenges, stressors and traumas they experience, create an environment to foster healthy child development, and connect with needed services and resources in their communities.
Who Child First Serves
Child First partners with caregivers, infants and young children, from birth through age five. The program works with families who have experienced trauma and other adversities (such as poverty, mental health challenges, housing insecurity, or abuse and neglect), or whose children are experiencing emotional, behavioral, learning or developmental challenges.
This program is available to individuals with open DCFS cases. Contact your DCFS case worker to place a referral.
How Child First Works
A child’s earliest experiences and relationships are critical to brain development – laying the foundation for long-term health, learning and success. Grounded in the science of brain development, the Child First model promotes responsive caregiving to protect a child’s developing brain from stress and support healthy development. With health equity at its core, Child First helps caregivers cope with hardship and stress, create a sense of safety and security at home, and build better lives for their families.
Child First utilizes a two-pronged approach, pairing families with a highly trained, two-person care team who provides comprehensive support and promotes caregiver capacity. Each care team includes a licensed mental health clinician, who provides relationship-based, family driven counseling to help address trauma, challenging behaviors, developmental concerns and other adversities, and a care coordinator, who connects families with complementary, community-based services and resources to support healthy child development and family wellbeing.
With regular home visits and services typically lasting a minimum of 6-12 months, Child First delivers tailored programming, mental health intervention, and connection to resources, centered on the family’s innate strengths and unique circumstances. Child First’s intensive early intervention, family-driven care, and comprehensive services help strengthen family stability, connection and long-term ability to thrive.
When parents and caregivers have the resources and support they need to raise happy, healthy children, they are better equipped to break cycles of trauma, adversity and poor health. The Child First approach serves the needs of both generations together, strengthening caregiver-child relationships and building a foundation for a family’s long-term health and well-being.