Basics
Twice a month, home visitors who are parents themselves, and reside in the targeted community, visit HIPPY parents in their home to role play the activity packets. Every other week, parents attend group meetings with other parents, HIPPY staff, consultants, and volunteers.

Parents
For the parents in the program, many of whom have limited formal education and are hard-pressed by circumstances, HIPPY provides:

• an enhanced sense of their own abilities;
• the satisfaction of teaching their own children;
• the excitement of seeing their children learn;
• an opportunity for fun and learning with their children;
• the support, guidance, and friendship of trained paraprofessionals; and
• a bridge to other agencies and organizations that may help with other concerns.

Some HIPPY parents actually become employed by the program as parent educators. They visit homes, role play lessons, provide encouragement to parents, and receive training and support through weekly staff meetings with their local coordinator. These positions may be part-time or full-time.

Curriculum
The HIPPY curriculum is cognitively based, focusing on language development, problem solving, and perceptual discrimination skills. There are 30 easy-to-use activity packets for each age of the program. Activities take as little as 15 minutes a day for the parent and child to complete. Learning and playing are mingled throughout HIPPY's structured curriculum as parents encourage their children to recognize shapes and colors, tell stories, follow directions, solve logical problems, and acquire other school readiness skills. Apart from building on the basic bond between parents and children, parents learn how to prepare their children for success in school and beyond.

Florida HIPPY Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) Center
The Florida HIPPY Training and Technical Assistance (T&TA) Center was opened in 1996 and is housed at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Currently, this state HIPPY office is staffed by three employees: a State Director, an Assistant State Director, and an Administrative Assistant. The role of the state office is to work in collaboration with HIPPY USA's national office in New York to provide training, technical support, and guidance to all of the HIPPY programs in the state of Florida.

Start - Up
HIPPY is not a mail-order kit. It is a structured home-community model focused on parent-child centered learning. It may be operated through existing agencies and organizations that have the space, fiscal, and personnel support to administer the program.

Establishing a HIPPY program means:

• forming a local group of interested advisors;
• selecting an implementing agency;
• raising funds;
• working with HIPPY USA and the Florida HIPPY T&TA Center;
• preparing and submitting an application;
• training a program coordinator; and becoming a part of a growing national network of HIPPY programs.

Some Florida HIPPY programs are funded from a State Legislative Appropriation and others are funded through a variety of local, state, or federal sources.

Events, activities, programs, and facilities of the University of South Florida are available to all without regard to race, color, marital status, sex, religion, national origin, disability, age, Vietnam or disabled veteran status as provided by law and in accordance with the University's respect for personal dignity.