The noteworthy successes of Every Child Succeeds

The best house-to-house campaigning going on in our community has nothing to do with Tuesday's election. It's the nine-year campaign to strengthen young, at-risk families conducted by the highly effective program, Every Child Succeeds.

ECS logged its 250,000th home visit last week. The program sends nurses, child development experts and social workers for one-on-one, hour-long sessions with young parents. The experts deliver information on child safety, health, early intervention, stimulating learning and understanding children's cognitive and emotional needs. Average age of the parents (mostly moms) is 20, and most have little outside support.

Typically, babies born in such families are at risk for delayed development, abuse, neglect and poor academic performance. But ECS partners up with the moms throughout their pregnancy and through their child's first three years of life. It builds a relationship so that the women are open to information and know where to turn when they need help. They take better care of their babies and of themselves.

The infant mortality rate for ECS babies is a quarter of that for Cincinnati babies as a whole. Better than 90 percent of them are developing normally, compared to 65 to 84 percent of infants without the support. And ECS moms are much less likely to use alcohol or tobacco during pregnancy and overcome depression at a much higher rate than other young moms.

It's such a solid success story -- making it truly a shame that it's still only able to serve 28 percent of families eligible for the program.