Healthy Start Kitsap
Create Brighter Futures For Vulnerable Babies
Each year hundreds of children in Kitsap County are born to first-time mothers living in poverty. Many of these mothers are young, single, socially isolated, and without a high school diploma. Their children face major barriers to leading healthy lives and escaping poverty, because their mothers lack the resources and knowledge to create a better life for their families.
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Beginning during pregnancy, and until the child is two, nurses visit moms at home to educate them on parenting, share resources, and perform health checks. Our goal is to reach more moms than ever. Will you join us?
Sponsor a Child In Kitsap
Help us provide sustainable solutions for children in Kitsap County to receive the services of Nurse Family Partnership. You can sponsor with confidence, knowing that NFP consistently meets and exceeds the standards of third party organizations that evaluate charities in order to help donors make wise giving decisions.
Sponsoring a child for a month in this program costs (about) $500. But any amount helps. Contribute to a child's future here.
What makes Nurse Family Partnership unique?
Supporting NFP is the most cost-effective way to empower first-time moms living in poverty to change their lives and the lives of their children through evidence based nurse home visiting. It not only addresses a child’s immediate physical needs, it also produces long-term family improvements in health, education, and economic self-sufficiency. Although these are similarities across other child sponsorship programs, NFP's approach is unique because we provide home visits from registered nurses, starting during the pregnancy and continuing until the child reaches age two.
Who We Are
Healthy Start Kitsap began as an offshoot of the Silverdale Rotary Club circa 1997. Several Rotarians were concerned about a rash of child abuse cases prominent in the local news and asked the question "what can be done to PREVENT child abuse?"
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In 2003, with the enthusiastic help of the Kitsap County Health District, we began a Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) program in Kitsap. NFP is a non-profit that transforms the first thousand days of life for babies born to moms living in poverty across the United States through an intensive home visitation program for first-time low-income mothers.
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This is an established, proven program with 40 years of careful objective studies. NFP is one of the few evidence-based programs identified as child abuse PREVENTION program. This program really works to improve the young family's life for this and future generations. Current RAND studies of the NFP program document a savings of $5 (in future community costs) for every $1 spent on this program.
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Even better, by operating through an Agency Fund at Kitsap Community Foundation, we can now put 99% of all all donations straight toward the program. ​Find out more by visiting the NFP national website.