The future looks bright for Oklahoma families thanks to the dedicated staff of Children First: Nurse-Family Partnership.

Offered through county health departments, the program hallmark is registered nurse home visits, which educate and prepare parents for successful family life. The program enrolls first-time moms in their first 28 weeks of pregnancy and continues until the child turns 2 years old.

The program, currently in 20 states, is based on research conducted by David Olds, director of the Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health at the University of Colorado. Oklahoma was the first state to implement the program in all counties in 1997.

Also known as "C-1," the program takes a whole-family approach. "It’s a comprehensive program, at no cost to families," said Hayley Nitchals, registered nurse at Tillman County Health Department, who has worked with C-1 families since September 2004. "My favorite part is seeing first-time parents succeed and then getting excited about taking care of their children," she said.

Jackson County nurse Olga Borrego, who has been with the program more than six years, said her favorite part is the babies. "It’s fun to see those little kiddos grow with Mom and Dad," she said. Success is a word that comes up a lot in this program. "You have parents who achieve great things," Borrego said. She points to the mom who made it through RN school during her time in Nurse-Family Partnership. "The moms that make it set their goals at the beginning of the program, and at the end, you get to see them reach their goals," she said.

"Success isn’t measured by anything ‘normal.’ There’s not a standard … as long as when we begin, they set out to reach certain goals, and get there. To us those are successes."

C-1 nurses receive thorough training in three areas: perinatal, infant and toddler stages. "We are constantly either catching up or going back and retraining on a certain area. We have a lot of training behind us," Borrego said.

The nurses do confront obstacles. "Language is a big one," Borrego said. She is the only Spanish-speaking C-1 nurse in a four-county area. The others take interpreters along. "We have pretty good interpreters, and [our clients] are able to continue the program."

Altus Air Force Base is also an occasional obstacle. Often, moms are transferred midway through the program. "Sometimes we get lucky and they’re stationed here long enough to finish," Borrego said.

Borrego prepares parents for the time when their baby – oddly enough — will not like the sight of her. "When the kiddos are learning anything new, they want the comfort of being safe," she explained. "Learning is a little scary at first, but when they have mastered the new skill, they act like, ‘Forget you, Mommy, I can handle this on my own.’"

Borrego told about one child whose fussiness every time she would visit went on so long that it almost became a concern. One day Borrego arrived at the home expecting the usual fuss and found the little girl happy to see her. The child came right up and sat on her lap, opened a big alphabet book and started flipping pages. "The mother told me, ‘You said she was gonna learn something new, well here it is. Pick any letter.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I pick G.’" The child flipped over to the G page and said, "goat." The little girl repeated her feat with Q and other letters.

"That was probably the one that floored me throughout my history with the program. I’ve never seen a little girl do that at this age, 17 months. It goes back to Mommy and Daddy being really good about promoting growth and reading to this little girl ever since she was itsy bitsy. At 17 months you saw the impact of that. It’s always stuck in my mind. That was three or four years ago."

Borrego explained that the program follows up on mothers. Their aim is that mothers will continue to use what they have learned with their next child.

Vicky Foraker, a 2002 graduate of the program, said, "At 22 years, I still was not mature enough to understand the value of being a mom. The Children First program helped me to realize the importance not only of my baby’s physical well-being, but also that talking, reading and playing with her gave her brain the stimulation it so needed. I’m positive that without the program I would have taken good care of her, but I would’ve neglected all of the emotional and mental aspects of motherhood."

Foraker’s daughter, Molly, was writing her letters at 2 years old and reading at 3. She credits the help of her family and "the knowledge Nurse Olga, as we called her, gave to her father and me." She wishes that the program could extend beyond two years. "I was able to carry all the information that was given to me over to my son, who is 3 already and doing wonderfully."

While Nurse-Family Partnership is only for first-time parents, the definition of "first-time" can include moms who gave up their first child for adoption, or had a fetal death, or whose infant died in the first year of life, so they didn’t get the experience of parenting. So no one should be afraid to ask, because they may qualify for the program. "If they don’t qualify for us, we do refer them to other parenting agencies. We’re not the only ones," Borrego said.