04 Jan CAPA Receives $5,000 Grant from THCF to Fund Family Support Services Program

Child Abuse Prevention Association (CAPA) recently received a grant for $5,000 from the Truman Heartland Community Foundation (THCF) to help fund their Family Support Services (FSS) program.

Family Support Services (FSS) delivers therapeutic, psycho-educational services in both community and home-based settings to help children and families build on their strengths to prevent abuse and improve family life. FSS has two programs, Parents and Children Together (PACT), and Healthy Family Connections (HFC).  PACT provides education to children and families using the Strengthening Families program, an evidence-based program recognized by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as a Model Program. The program uses family systems and cognitive behavioral approaches to increase resilience and improve family relationships, parenting skills, and youths’ social and life skills.  FSS’s other program, Healthy Family Connections (HFC), is a voluntary, in-home visitation program open to mothers in Jackson County from the time they are expecting until children reach age three. Most of CAPA’s HFC participants are from Eastern Jackson County. CAPA case workers meet with families in their homes to provide parenting education, information on child development, child developmental assessments, and to facilitate connections to community resources.

The overall goal of both the Parents and Children Together (PACT) and Healthy Family Connections (HFC) programs is to prevent child abuse. HFC does this by increasing the presence of the five protective factors that have been linked to lower rates of child abuse. PACT accomplishes this goal by building stronger families that use communication skills instead of violence to address problems.

The Child Abuse Prevention Association (CAPA) was founded in 1975 as a crisis and information hotline. Since then, CAPA has expanded to offer a broad array of services that help families prevent child abuse, and help children and families overcome the trauma of childhood violence and neglect. CAPA’s services include community education, in-home parent education programs, community outreach, and various counseling services for victims of abuse and those seeking to prevent abuse or improve family dynamics.