Effective parenting takes skill. Sadly, many parents today do not have the opportunity to learn these skills. Or they bring to their families harmful and ineffective learned behavior or skills. Children do not come with a "how to" parenting manual. This is where Healthy Families can help.

Healthy Families St. Lucie is a voluntary, home visiting program that promotes positive parent-child relationships and healthy child growth and development for children up to 5 years of age. Healthy Families helps teach parents positive and effective parenting skills and then shows them how to incorporate those skills into other parts of their life, such as education and employment.

Healthy Families St. Lucie County has a 99 percent success rate in preventing child abuse in families we serve. In fact, our program has won numerous statewide awards, including Project of the Year more than once. Evaluators of an independent study found that 93 percent of children in Healthy Families Florida programs were fully immunized by age 2, 92 percent of mothers participating in Healthy Families did not have a subsequent pregnancy within two years and 81 percent of participants who completed the program improved their education level, received job training or became gainfully employed while enrolled in the program.

Last year, Healthy Families statewide took a 32 percent cut in funding, but thanks to the funding from Children's Services Council of St. Lucie County, our local Healthy Families program has been able to minimize those cuts and continue to successfully serve our St. Lucie County families.

For more information about our services, please visit our website atwww.healthyfamilies.org or call us at 772-467-9505.

Robin Kloser is director of the Healthy Families program in St. Lucie County.