Prevent Child Abuse-New Jersey (PCA-NJ) is a non-profit organization founded in 1979 as the New Jersey affiliate of Prevent Child Abuse America, a national coordinating body of chapters in 38 states. The mission of Prevent Child Abuse-New Jersey is to lead statewide efforts to eliminate physical, sexual and emotional child abuse and neglect. By establishing local partnerships, PCA-NJ builds communities, strengthens families, and empowers parents through parenting programs, education and training, advocacy, and public awareness activities.

Prevention services are delivered in three ways:

Technical Assistance—Staff experts work with community based groups to provide programs such as:

• Every Person Influences Children (EPIC): EPIC offers character education lesson plans for schools, and parenting workshops to help children develop self-esteem and social responsibility.
• Healthy Families (HF): Healthy Families offers overburdened parents home visits focusing on basic parenting education, parent-child interaction, emotional support, and assistance with accessing health care and other community resources by way of home visitation.
• Parents as Teachers (PAT): PAT is an early childhood and parent education program which includes home visits, parent and family group activities, and annual developmental screenings.
• Family Outreach Program (FOP): Increases parents’ knowledge of child development and family involvement in their child’s education through collaboration among child care/early childhood education centers under contract in the “Abbott” schools districts, local community-based organizations, and PCA-NJ.
• Parent Linking Project (PLP): PLP is a school-based program for teenage parents enabling them to complete their education and fulfill their parental responsibilities through parenting classes, life-skills seminars, school-based child care, and case management.
• New Jersey Parent Information and Resource Center (NJPI RC):  The NJPIRC is a US Department of Education grant program which aims to affect student achievement positively through boosting and encouraging parental involvement. This is accomplished through funding for creative parent involvement initiatives, parent and school resources and technical assistance.

Professional Training—Courses in all aspects of child development and child abuse prevention for professionals or paraprofessionals.

Public Education—Hundreds of presentations and thousands of pieces of educational material are provided each year to parents, caregivers, and groups.

• PCA-NJ oversees a program called Healthy Families, which was founded by the national branch, PCA-America. This home visiting program aids families with newborns by providing a trained home visitor to visit the family and ensure that the baby is doing well and on a healthy track. It was also established to help alleviate some of the stress of bringing home a newborn child. Additionally, it serves to help prevent child abuse and neglect in families of all income brackets.
• In 2001, PCA-NJ became involved with the Family Outreach Program, which employs family workers in the Abbott school districts (after the Abbott court case in the 1970s). These workers are trained by family worker coordinators to prepare young children for kindergarten. PCA-NJ hires the coordinators and oversees 700 family workers in the state.

Community and Population Served by the Organization

Prevent Child Abuse-New Jersey provides parents with the information and skills they need to nurture their children, and equips communities with the awareness and resources they need to support families and protect children.

• PCA-NJ would be interested in having students do a mapping project to identify and compare program sites with the locations and frequency of DYFS (Department of Youth and Family Services) referrals and/or crime statistics in those communities. 
• What if every mother in New Jersey was entitled to a home visit after the arrival of a newborn? PCA-NJ would be interested in having students explore the possibility of a universal home visiting program for mothers of newborns in New Jersey and to create materials that would aid PCA-NJ in generating attention for this issue in local and state governments.
• PCA-NJ would like to evaluate the effectiveness of the Family Outreach Program – to compare academic achievement in kindergarteners in the Abbott school districts and elsewhere in New Jersey. Is the program working? Why or why not? Is there a better way to prepare children for school? PCA-NJ has a lot of history and data to offer the student willing to answer this question.
• Students could help PCA-NJ analyze the results of our Parent Education workshops as well as training program for professionals.

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