FARMINGTON — Support services intended to help first-time parents through the Maine Families Home Visiting Program are facing elimination due to funding cuts in the proposed state budget.

Colon Durrell, Franklin County Children’s Task Force’s board president, will address the local impact of the proposed cut Friday at the State House before a joint meeting of the Appropriations Committee and the Department of Health and Human Services, the administrator of the statewide program.

Just three weeks ago, Task Force Executive Director Renee Blanchet received a call from DHHS informing her that the agency’s contract for the home-visiting program would end June 30.

Approximately 135 families in Franklin County, first-time parents of children from birth to 5 years old, will see an end to the 1,300 visits made last year by 3.5 home visitors without the funding, she said.

The intended funding cut of $4.6 million statewide means the loss of $176,000 from the local economy and a loss of five jobs at the Task Force. Statewide it means up to 110 positions lost.

But the biggest concern is what happens to the families helped by home visitors over the past 15 years, she said.

As a young mother, Danielle Allen dropped out of college and sought support to help her not only learn more about parenting but to set goals, she said Wednesday as some home visitors and parents gathered to voice their concerns.

Now five years later, she’s back in college earning a 3.78 GPA, starting a 40-hour work position, is a homeowner and is parenting three children by herself without home visitations after her first child turned 5.

“It’s a result of that support,” she said. “As a young mother, they (home visitors) pointed me in the right direction.”

While any parent who gives birth at Franklin Memorial Hospital is eligible for the voluntary home visiting program regardless of age or income, 50 percent of parents helped in Franklin County are teen parents. Statewide that number is 25 percent, Blanchet said. Home visitors have worked with college professors, widows, those who lost jobs, parents who are incarcerated and first-time parents in their 40s, she said.

During the home visits, it’s not a matter of telling the parent what to do but hearing their concerns and helping them to advocate for themselves, explained home visitor Deb LaGrange.

The parents come to rely and trust the home visitor as they answer questions about the child’s development, check on immunizations, safety factors within the home and help reduce stress felt by the parent.

The goal of home visitations is prevention and providing support to help raise healthy children.

“Prevention is cheaper. The cost of intervention services versus prevention services is a 7-to-1 ratio,” Blanchet said.

Prevention can mean raising children who won’t need mental health, judicial or other social services later in their lives, she said.

With the home visitor support, 94 percent of parents who have entered the program without a high school diploma earned that diploma or a GED. And some 91 percent of parents seeking employment while in the program found work.

Over the past 15 years, the program has helped 1,500 families in Franklin County.

For Heather Soule of Chesterville, the home visitor helps fill in the gaps she and her husband face in the challenges of parenting their nearly 2-year-old daughter, she said.

“As a first-time parent, I depend on my home visitor to help present positive innovative ideas that have effectively worked over the years with countless parents. I feel more at ease asking her for advice than listening to everybody else’s opinion,” Soule wrote in a letter voicing her concern.

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