Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Early Childhood Prenatal To 3 topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
First Things First Porter County asks for $125,000 to expand prenatal‑to‑age‑3 supports in county
Summary
Casey Tenmars of First Things First Porter County requested $125,000 from the county fund to support prenatal‑to‑age‑3 programs, including Help Me Grow, Healthy Steps, Building Blocks and collaboration challenge grants; the initiative is partnering with Lakeshore Public Media and local organizations to expand services and public awareness.
Casey Tenmars, associate director of First Things First Porter County, asked the panel for $125,000 to sustain and expand services focused on prenatal care through children’s third birthdays, the age range the organization identifies as having the largest long‑term developmental impact.
Tenmars described a network approach that funds and coordinates programs such as Help Me Grow, Healthy Steps, a Building Blocks multimedia project and a collaboration challenge grant program that distributes smaller awards to local partners. "We focus exclusively on prenatal through 3 year olds, here in Porter County," Tenmars said, and argued the investment produces downstream benefits for health, education and economic outcomes.
The request is for core backbone support: Tenmars said the funding would underwrite First Things First’s coordination role, shared services and the re‑granting process rather than a single program. The presenter said the program currently coordinates about 60 local partners and has issued 10 collaboration challenge grants to community organizations; 3|20 Recovery was cited as a recent collaboration grant recipient.
Lakeshore Public Media and producer Chuck Roberts described a complementary media strategy: public‑media content, podcasts and local broadcast work to raise awareness and connect families to services. Roberts told the panel the initiative will produce radio and television content and said the project aims to measure real‑world outcomes such as maternal and infant health indicators in addition to digital metrics.
Panel members asked whether a smaller funding amount would be useful; Tenmars said the organization could scale work down and that some matching funds or phased approaches were possible. The panel said it would review the application and follow up with applicants next week.
