More Services
Military Families and Veterans Pilot Prevention Program
The purpose of the Military Families and Veterans Pilot Prevention Program is:
- To improve the well-being of Texas military and veteran families by promoting positive parental involvement in their children’s lives.
- To educate, facilitate, and otherwise support the abilities of parents to provide continued emotional, physical, and financial support for their children.
- To build a community coalition of local stakeholders who are focused on the prevention of child abuse and neglect.
- To prevent child abuse and neglect occurrences in military communities.
These prevention services are free to eligible military and veteran families that:
- Include a “primary caregiver” who is an active duty or former military member, National Guard member, Ready Reserve member, veteran, military retiree, or their dependents.
- Include a child (who is zero to 17 years of age).
- Are expecting a child who will be identified as the “target child” for services.
This program benefits the entire family unit and provides necessary supports to our military veterans and families. PEI offered this program in El Paso, San Antonio, and the Killeen-Belton area in FY 2018.
Services to At-Risk Youth (STAR)
The STAR program is available in all 254 Texas counties. PEI contracts with community agencies to offer crisis-intervention for families, individual and family counseling, emergency short-term respite care, as well as youth and parent skills classes. STAR serves families with youth through 18 years old who are dealing with conflict at home, school attendance issues, delinquency, or have a youth who has run away from home. In FY 2018, the STAR program served 21,231 youth. STAR contractors also provide prevention material and educational presentations that serve everyone in the community.
Statewide Youth Services Network (SYSN)
The SYSN program provides evidence-based programming through a statewide network of youth programs aimed at juvenile delinquency prevention and positive youth development. Programs are available to youth ages 6-17 in each DFPS region. Services include school and community-based mentoring programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters and Texas Alliance of Boys and Girls Clubs. The program served 3,717 clients in FY 2018.
Texas Families: Together and Safe (TFTS)
Texas Families: Together and Safe funds community-based parent education programs in many areas of the state that have been shown to relieve stress and promote better parenting skills and behaviors to help families become self-sufficient and successfully nurture their children. The goals of TFTS are to help children stay in their own homes, and help local programs, government agencies, and families work together. This program served 2,419 families in FY 2018. Contracts for this program ended on August 31, 2018, and it is no longer available.
Texas Home Visiting
The primary goals of the Texas Home Visiting program, including the Texas Nurse-Family Partnership program, are to support community-driven approaches to enhancing maternal child health, parent and child attachment, child development, child safety, family stability, and school readiness. Texas Home Visiting uses a multi-layer approach that supports direct services as well as development of early childhood systems in eligible communities.
Texas Home Visiting funds evidence-based home visiting services to at-risk pregnant women and the parents (or caregivers) of children up to age 5. It also funds early childhood coalitions that work to coordinate services and address broad community issues that affect young children and families.