Did you know today, Wednesday June 20th is World Refugee Day? This morning Home Start CEO, Laura Tancredi-Baese spoke with LaDona Harvey and Ted Garcia of MORNING NEWS with LADONA & TED on AM600 KOGO to discuss World Refugee Day and highlight how Home Start, and it’s First 5 First Steps program help refugees and their children in San Diego. Listen Below:
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Ted: “Today is World Refugee Day and a San Diego nonprofit called Home Start is helping women refugees get on their feet.”
La Dona: “Joining us on KOGO News live is the CEO of Home Start Laura Tancredi-Baese and what are we seeing when it comes to refugees here in San Diego?”
Laura: “Well good morning Ted and LaDona. Thanks for having me on today. We see families that are struggling so Home Start’s mission is about preventing child abuse and neglect and strengthening families that are at risk, and one of our programs in particular is a First Five funded program called First 5 First Steps.
We are seeing families coming from various areas such as Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, other places who are trying to find a better life for themselves and their children. What’s involved in the First 5 First Steps program, well it’s funding from First 5 of California so First 5 recognizes how important it is to address children’s needs during pregnancy and ages zero to five. This program is an evidence-based home visitation program where our highly trained staff are really partnered with a family for about three years. So they start working with the mom while she’s pregnant and all the way through to the child’s third birthday and then we have a wonderful graduation celebration…
So we work with families who are either very poor, who are military families, immigrant or refugee families, or we also look at teens or transition age young mothers so those are some of the the four kind of at-risk populations that we work closely with again for about three years really strengthening their capacity to be a healthy parent to address some of the trauma and challenges that they’re facing and link them to resources and really just build the tightest bond and connection between the parents and the children that we can.”