Prevent Child Abuse America receives new awards that focus on early child development, home visiting and the country’s prevention infrastructure.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Chicago, Illinois, March 4, 2010 – Prevent Child Abuse America is pleased to announce that it has received three new awards to further its work on behalf of the nation’s children and the programs and communities that support their healthy development. Two of the awards come from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the third comes from the Pritzker Early Childhood Foundation.

The Pritzker Early Childhood Foundation grant will support the maintenance of current program services to Prevent Child Abuse America’s network of more than 400 Healthy Families America sites. This financial support will allow Prevent Child Abuse America to work with Great Kids, Inc. to improve Core Training for direct service staff, implement more than 35 hours of Distance Learning Modules for direct service staff and begin to strengthen Healthy Families America’s prenatal curriculum for use with families.

“Home visiting in general, and Healthy Families America specifically, is a crucial strategy for supporting children, their development, their families and the communities they live in,” says James M. Hmurovich, President & CEO, Prevent Child Abuse America, “and we cannot thank The Pritzker Early Childhood Foundation’s enough for their investment in this important work.”

Prevent Child Abuse America has also received two grants from The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The first is a one-year grant focused on supporting the work of Prevent Child Abuse America’s chapter network to address the budget shortages being faced by states and communities and the move to cut funding for prevention at the very time these investments are being shown to have an impact on children’s lives and the prevention of child abuse and neglect.

With the funding from the grant work is well underway to develop a series of tools created by a number of experts from both within and outside the field of prevention that will make the argument for “Why Prevention Matters” and why the prevention infrastructure that has been developed must be maintained and even expanded during this time of economic crisis.

The second grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is a two-year grant focused on public education that will build on Prevent Child Abuse America’s signature campaign Pinwheels for Prevention and seek to create an active, engaged and sustained national movement that works to prevent child abuse and neglect.

“The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has shown that it not only believes in the need to sustain the prevention infrastructure across the country,” said Mr. Hmurovich, “but that it’s possible to build a social movement focused on prevention. We celebrate their interest in this work and appreciate their support of Prevent Child Abuse America to accomplish it.”