Chula Vista Promise Neighborhood programs strive to support and strengthen all families as key partners who not only understand how to help their children thrive, but also have the resources to do so.
CVPromise developmental specialists working closely with Promotoras and CVPromise partners are reaching out to families with children 5 years and younger in the Castle Park community to offer supports, tools and opportunities. Among the various services offered are newborn home visits and Learn with Me classes.
Bringing home baby is an exciting but potentially intimidating time for parents. In the Castle Park community, our outreach survey showed that 44% of families were single female households and almost 15% of families fell below the poverty rate. Providing supports and resources early helps create a strong foundation for parents and children.
Therefore, newborn home visits are offered to all parents within 30 days of birth to help with many of those first parental questions or concerns. Among the supports, nurses from Family Health Centers of San Diego and Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista provide routine physical exams, breastfeeding information and support, safe sleeping arrangements, baby sensory needs, maternal depression information, and additional resources and referrals when needed.
Developmental specialists are reaching out to parents, homecare centers and non-formal providers — like grandparents and relatives — who have nonschool-age children at home. They are providing resources and tools to introduce educational components to easily use at home which will assist in getting children ready for kindergarten.
As an extension, in partnership with Rady Children’s Hospital Children’s Care Connection, Learn with Me classes provide co-learning for parents and children who are on waiting lists for preschool. Like a Mommy and Me class, the free one- and two-hour classes introduce both children and parents to a classroom environment and offer educational activities that parents can then use at home as well.
“Every morning Abraham is ready for school,” Maria Torres, mother of three, said. “He watches his older brothers and sister and he wants to do just what they do.”
Torres’s daughter is a second grader at Castle Park Elementary and she also has twin sons enrolled in CVPromise’s Escuelita del Futuro preschool. Torres said she noticed that Abraham, who is almost 3 years old, needed more hands-on educational activities. He can already recognize his written name, shapes, colors and alphabet. Torres said that in the classes Abraham feels like he’s in school and is learning how to pay attention, sit quietly and follow directions — plus he is having fun.
“He loves to come to school. He is always smiling and he is learning so much already,” Torres said. “This is exactly what we both needed.”
