Child Crisis Arizona Receives National Recognition as a Blue Ribbon Affiliate

(PHOENIX – Nov. 29, 2017) – Child Crisis Arizona earned a prestigious endorsement by Parents as Teachers national center as a Blue Ribbon Affiliate, making it one of the top performing early education and home visiting affiliates within the international Parents as Teachers network. The official designation was made on October 1, 2017.

Being named a Blue Ribbon Affiliate affirms that Child Crisis Arizona is a high-quality member of the home visitation and parent education field, implementing the evidence-based Parents as Teachers model with fidelity.  Families in the Maricopa County community are positively impacted by the services delivered by this program, which include home visits, group connections, child screening and connections to community resources, equipping parents with knowledge and resources to prepare their children for a stronger start in life and greater success in school.

To earn this recognition, over the past year staff at Child Crisis Arizona completed the intensive Quality Endorsement and Improvement process through the Parents as Teachers national center.  Child Crisis Arizona demonstrated that it meets all of the Parents as Teachers Essential Requirements and at least 75 percent of the Parents as Teachers Quality Standards.  The designation as a Blue Ribbon Affiliate is good for five years, until September 30, 2022 as long as the program continues to meet the Essential Requirements.

The Quality Endorsement and Improvement Process is designed to help ensure and recognize quality implementation of the Parents as Teachers model, which is used in more than 1,300 organizations including schools, family resource centers, social service agencies, housing authorities, churches, and healthcare systems.

Among Child Crisis Arizona’s greatest strengths identified by the national office is its vision for safe kids and strong families. The organization operates Maricopa County’s only Emergency Children’s Shelter Program for young children who have experienced abused and neglects. In addition, Child Crisis Arizona has a foster care and adoption program, offers early education services to 208 children ages 1 – 5, provides classes and workshops to families and offers counseling services to children.

“The entire staff at Child Crisis Arizona works tirelessly to ensure that we all follow through with our unified vision of ‘Safe Kids, Strong Families.’ Being recognized as a Blue Ribbon affiliate is a testament to our hard work within the community and we couldn’t be more honored to have received it,” said Torrie Taj, CEO of Child Crisis Arizona. “Our job is to bring kids into our shelters and begin the process of healing and providing hope—a mission we don’t plan on quitting until we help reduce the number of children in Arizona in foster care from 17,000 to zero.”

About Child Crisis Arizona

Child Crisis Arizona’s vision is safe kids and strong families. We operate the Valley’s only Emergency Children’s Shelter Program for young children who have experienced abuse and neglect. As one of the largest foster care and adoption programs, we license, train and certify individuals and families to find homes for the nearly 17,000 Arizona children in foster care. We create strong and successful families through our Home Visitation, Counseling and Family Education programs and workshops. With a recent expansion of our Early Education Services, we now serve more than 200 low-income children in Phoenix and Mesa.  There are many opportunities to get involved through volunteering, financial support and advocacy.

For more information, please visit www.childcrisisaz.org.

About Parents as Teachers

Parents as Teachers is an international, non-profit organization that promotes optimal early development, learning and health of young children.  Parents as Teachers provides an evidence-based home visiting model and is a center for innovation in promising practices. Parents as Teachers designs and develops quality research-based and evidence-informed curricula and trainings for early childhood family support professionals.

We support evidence based model implementation by our local partners through professional development, implementation support, continuous quality improvement and a quality endorsement process. We facilitate data collection, analysis, evaluation and research to deepen and demonstrate our impact in communities. Lastly, we advocate for children and families at the state and federal level through community engagement.

For more information, visit www.ParentsAsTeachers.org.