Corner Office: Healthy Families Celebrates 25 Years

25 years ago, Arizona became a pioneer, and for once, led the nation in doing something innovative! We became one of the first states on the mainland to implement Healthy Families, a now proven and then promising program that promotes healthy child development, and prevents child abuse and neglect.

Thanks to the leadership of advocates, including Child & Family Resources staff (then known as Tucson Association for Child Care), the first Healthy Families teams began in Tucson and Prescott. Recently, the several hundred Healthy Families coaches, supervisors, administrators along with state government officials, gathered in Phoenix to celebrate this silver anniversary.

The Healthy Families model is a type of home visitation service. In essence, trained coaches provide mentoring and support to interested young mothers and fathers, at no cost, and in the couple’s own home. These counselors visit periodically (more at first and then scale back as per need and parental request), and use an established research proven method to build trust and then help parents gain confidence and skills. For a fraction of the cost of foster care, or residential care – the frequent result of children being removed from their homes – we can prevent child maltreatment and promote children’s success.

Child & Family Resources is one of the two largest providers of Healthy Families in Arizona. Providing these kinds of cost effective interventions to parents of infants and young children is one of the smartest ways to ensure our mission of building strong communities where children can reach their full potential.

Employees from across the state gathered on Tuesday, September 27th to celebrate the work Arizona has done for children and families. Here’s to many more years to come! 

Eric Schinder, Ph.D.
President and CEO

Since 2005, Dr. Eric Schindler has been the President and Chief Executive Officer  for Child & Family Resources, Inc.  Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Arizona in 1982. After internship training in child and family psychology at U.C. Davis, and postdoctoral training in pediatric psychology in Chicago, he has spent over 30 years working in Tucson community settings as an administrator, director, teacher and practitioner.  A licensed psychologist since 1984, he also served as an adjunct instructor in Family Studies at the University of Arizona for many years. 

Previously, Dr. Schindler served for nine years as the Director of Clinical Services for La Frontera Center, Inc., a comprehensive community behavioral healthcare organization, where he was also the Director of Training for the APA approved Southern Arizona Psychology Internship Consortium. He maintained a  private practice in psychotherapy for 20 years prior to assuming the leadership of Child & Family Resources.