CLNkids (formerly Cuidando Los Niños) announced today that it received a $50,000 grant from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico (BCBSNM) through its Healthy Kids, Healthy Families® (HKHF) initiative. Because of our commitment to end child homelessness in New Mexico by offering free, high-quality early childhood education plus wrap-around services for parents, we are now partnering with BCBSNM whose HKHF vision is to help improve the health of youth and their families in local communities.
"We're proud to give our support to CLNkids," said Janice Torrez, divisional vice president of external affairs and chief of staff, BCBSNM. "They do great work to positively impact children's health by creating a culture of support, education and opportunities for children and their parents, all with the hope of ending the generational cycle of homelessness."
HKHF is a signature program of BCBSNM. The initiative focuses on engaging children and their families in understanding the importance of nutritious food, raising the level of physical activity, improving immunizations rates, better managing chronic conditions and promoting safe environments. Likewise, CLNkids has been integrating health and wellness programming into our curriculum for years. As part of the HKHF grant, CLNkids has been able to increase our focus on the children's physical and mental health by having them engage in age-appropriate physical activities and exercises and supplementing our therapeutic services to help children develop self-regulation skills and healthy social interactions. In addition to helping the children, this grant also allows CLNkids to teach parents about nutrition, attachment and parenting skills, and provide healthy food to feed all family members breakfast, lunch and dinner every weekend. /p>
"CLNkids has been fortunate to partner with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico through its HKHF initiative for the past two years," said Tammy L. Hanks, Executive Director of CLNkids. "It is abundantly clear once you meet the homeless children we serve that they have benefitted in all aspects of their development from the extra attention and services we've been able to provide due to this generous grant."