Long Beach medical nonprofit The Children’s Clinic was awarded an exclusive $1M grant that will go towards launching a program to identify and address the effects of stress and violence on infants, toddlers and pregnant mothers.
The program will be called the Everychild Bright Beginnings Initiative after The Everychild Foundation, which supplied the coveted grant.
“This new innovative program has the potential to change the way health care providers conduct routine exams of low-income families with young children,” said Jacqueline Caster, Founder and President of the Everychild Foundation. “By identifying chronic stressors in their lives and providing ways to intervene, quality of life will be greatly improved both in the short term and the long term.”
The Everychild Foundation is an L.A. agency that gives one grant per year to an area nonprofit benefitting youth. The Children’s Clinic’s grant will be spread out over three years, during which healthcare providers at the clinic’s eight area locations will identify and support young children in highly stressed home environments in an attempt to prevent the dramatic and lifelong effects on health that toxic stress and violence has been proven to have on children under the age of three.
According to the Children’s Clinic, the end goal of the Everychild Bright Beginnings Initiative is to introduce a proven approach to reducing abuse and neglect and creating nurturing home environments during pregnancy and the first three years of life.
“When fully implemented, the Everychild Bright Beginnings Initiative will catalyze a fundamental change in the way we approach pediatric and early childhood services,” TCC Executive Director Elisa Nicholas said in a statement, “More importantly, we will change the trajectories of children’s lives.”
For more information about The Children’s Clinic, click here. For more information about The Everychild Foundation, click here.
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