Nfp Case Study In Early Childhood Education

NFP program’s birth came about through the observations and experiences of David Olds (the founder) while working in a day care center in the inner city of West Baltimore, in the early 1970s. The center served children aged three to five years with a curriculum that was majorly play. Olds noticed this and decided to reintroduce a new curriculum that involved play, cognitive stimulation and increased parental involvement in order to improve child health and development. However, he realized that his efforts may be futile as most of the children in the center may have had irreparable damage done to them due to certain cases he observed such as a child with severely delayed speech due to a mother who abused substances during pregnancy as she was
He chose the Elmira community to test his model as the community had a high unemployment rate, one of the highest rates of infant mortality, though on a decline (Infant mortality rate of 20/1000 prior to 1974, and 15.8/1000 afterwards), premature births and consistently had the highest rates of child abuse and neglect in the state (D. L. Olds, Henderson Jr, et al., 1986). He subsequently tested the program over the next three decades through the use of randomized clinical trials (RCTs), first in Elmira, New York, in 1977; then Memphis, Tennessee, in 1988; and Denver, Colorado, in 1994 using different populations; White, Black and Hispanic populations respectively (Olds, 2007). The use of these trials and subsequent follow-up studies over the years helped in comparison of outcomes (both short and long term) between mothers and children enrolled in the program, to a control group not enrolled in the program. This tested the effectiveness of the program on maternal health and child health and development which showed that the program produced sizeable and sustainable results: improved pregnancy outcomes, child health and development, and maternal life course ( Olds, 2007). After proven effectiveness, through a collaboration between public and private ventures, the program began replication in 1996 by extending to other counties and states and replicated similar results. In 2003, Nurse-Family Partnership National Service Office (NFP NSO) was established to facilitate replication across the U.S and to provide implementation agencies with the necessary support. There has been (and still is) about 14 follow-up studies since implementation which aid in tracking and evaluating participants’ outcomes (NFP,