Our History
Child and Family Opportunities, Inc. (CFO) was founded in 1970 with the initial plan of becoming a community action program for Hancock County. In time, the CAP idea was dropped in favor of focusing our mission towards serving children and their families with Head Start and Child Care services. Since our inception, our service area for center-based programs has expanded to include Washington County. In addition, we provide limited services in Waldo County through our sponsorship of the Child and Adult Care Food Program.
Over the years, the CFO mission has grown to reflect the changing needs of our society. As more women have joined the workforce, the demand for child care services has increased. In addition to providing child care for children ages six weeks through school-age, we expanded into the fields of child care resource and referral, family child care support, training and technical assistance, and providing subsidized child care services. In 1971 we began the sponsorship of one family child care home in the Child and Adult Care Food Program. Since that time, our child care food program has grown to a network of more than 40 family child care programs.
As the demands of raising children have increased, and stresses have mounted for families, the need for comprehensive Head Start and Early Head Start services has never been so great. Once limited to 55 children in three centers in Hancock County, our Head Start and Early Head Start programs now serve more than 300 children in 14 centers across Hancock and Washington counties.
In 2006 we enhanced our agency mission when we became the sponsor of Healthy Peninsula (HP), a community public health promotion program on the Blue Hill Peninsula. HP supports communities by building a coalition of citizens who work to improve community health. This has allowed CFO and HP to work together to reduce the effects of second hand smoke on young children, improve the nutrition services to children and families, and reduce toxins in communities and homes through Lead Poison Prevention programs.
