Healthy Families Arizona is a voluntary, home visitation program, aimed at the prevention of child abuse and neglect. This secondary prevention program is targeted to the parents of newborns with risk factors that make them vulnerable to child abuse and neglect, and at risk of parent/child relationship and child development problems. The risk factors that qualify parents for the program include parental history of abuse and neglect; substance abuse; mental health problems; poor coping skills; a lack of social support; unrealistic developmental expectations of infants and toddlers, difficulty with bonding and attachment; attitudes favorable toward harsh discipline; anger management issues; and a lack of resources to meet basic needs. Modeled on the Healthy Families America program, Healthy Families began in Arizona in 1991 with two sites. Administered by the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Healthy Families Arizona has realized considerable growth over the years, and is now available to families statewide. As with any considerable investment in cost and effort, the question of return is central to ongoing support of the Healthy Families Arizona program. Does the Healthy Families Arizona program (a) reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect; (b) lead to better health and development for children, and (c) does it enhance parent/child relationships? The longitudinal evaluation of Healthy Families Arizona was designed to answer these questions.

By establishing the District, the Arizona State Legislature created an entity charged with keeping county residents safe from flood hazards and established an independent funding source for essential projects. The District is a municipal corporation and political subdivision of the State of Arizona. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors doubles as the District's Board of Directors and receives counsel from the Flood Control Advisory Board comprised of county citizens.

Approximately 11,000 miles of rivers, streams and washes run through Maricopa County. In order to enhance and maintain the benefits provided by these watercourses, the Flood Control District of Maricopa County engaged in an effort to refine its role in river planning and management. To develop an enhanced river planning and management strategy, District staff adopted a process called C3RPM. The core C3 process addresses complex issues with a blend of comprehensive information collection to solicit diverse opinions; a coordinated and deliberative assessment of that information; and a collaborative decision-making system free of bias to promote a consensus result.

The District's Coordinated, Comprehensive, Collaborative Flood Hazard Mitigation Partnering (C3FHMP) effort addressed Strategic Initiative No.3 of the Flood Control District of Maricopa County 2009 Comprehensive Plan: Increase Collaboration and Partnerships. The District initiated the process to determine how the funding and resources of other entities could be best applied to mitigate flood hazards in Maricopa County, or where mutual benefits would be realized.

Maricopa County and twenty four incorporated cities and towns, two tribes and one other governmental organization participated in a cooperative effort to update the Maricopa County Multi-jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan. Hazard mitigation planning reduces the risk to people and property, and reduces the cost of recovering from a disaster. A hazard mitigation plan can help communities become more sustainable and disaster-resistant by focusing efforts on the hazards, disaster-prone areas and identifying appropriate mitigation actions. Effective mitigation planning and efforts can break the cycle of disaster damage, reconstruction, and repeated damage. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors officially adopted the Multi-jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan on April 14, 2010.

For a community to take full advantage of the opportunities provided in the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, it must first prepare a Community Wildfire Protection Plan. Maricopa County, partner agencies, and participating communities wish to adopt a Plan to better protect their communities from wildfire risk, to better prepare citizens, and to become eligible to apply for and receive federal and other grant monies to implement wildland fire mitigation and programs.

This Protocol, initially developed in 1995, is offered to coordinate the involvement and interaction of each agency in Maricopa County involved with providing care, treatment, and assistance to all children, whether victims or witnesses, where criminal conduct is suspected. This Protocol serves to ensure each child is treated with dignity, fairness, and respect and protected from harassment, intimidation, or abuse, and to minimize the secondary trauma that can accompany investigations of criminal conduct.

In 2006, the Bureau of Justice Statistics awarded a State Justice Statistics grant to the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission’s Statistical Analysis Center to conduct research on homicide in Arizona. The Center, with assistance from local law enforcement officials, and researchers from the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, collected homicide data from the following sources: Supplemental Homicide Reports, law enforcement homicide case files, and autopsy reports. The purpose of this report is to provide a general description of the scope and nature of the homicide problem in Arizona. Specifically, this report examines the general characteristics of victims and offenders, the circumstances surrounding homicide incidents, temporal patterns when homicides occur, and the geographic characteristics where homicides took place.