About Us

Home Safe Kids is designed to educate and inform parents about the dangers of household environmental hazards and provide them with the opportunity to protect their children. Excessive exposure to environmental hazards has been linked to:

• Learning disabilities
• Chronic illness such as asthma and other respiratory infections
• Social and behavioral problems
• Decreased school performance
• Developmental delays
• Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

Rationale for Use

Currently, there are no existing parent-focused programs addressing the importance of minimizing household environmental hazards. Courses and information are available for childcare centers and schools. Although there are several child health and safety curriculum boosters for parenting and early intervention programs, few focus entirely on raising parents' awareness of environmental hazards or helping parents correct these concerns. This curriculum is unique in that it is designed to be a complement to home visiting programs to further strengthen the health and safety component of current education programs.

Outcomes

Anticipated outcomes for this curriculum include:

• Participating families will become aware of the harmful effects of indoor air quality hazards through a series of educational lessons.
• Link participants to the resources that can aid them in abating the problems.
• Extension and human service agencies will increase capacity to work together in solving home air environmental problems for their limited resource clientele.
• Children in participating families will be exposed at a lesser degree to in-home air environment problems, particularly lead.