Milena Oberti-Lanz, Executive Director, explained the overall mission of the Maternal and Child Health Consortium as empowering families to achieve better health. They focus their services on pregnant women, infants and families with young children so their teaching has a long term impact on large numbers. Services are provided from 5 offices spread throughout Chester County, one of which is in Kennett Square.
Because the US child population is more diverse than the overall population, all of the service providers at Maternal and Child Health Care are multi-lingual. One of the results of our diversity is high infant mortality rates. Many new parents don't understand how our medical system works. Therefore one of the services provided is Healthy Start.
As Cecelia Arce, the Program Director shown left, explained, this program begins during the first trimester of pregnancy and works with the entire family. Case workers ensure the family is getting the needed health care and does special screenings of the mother for depression, which creates risk for the baby and mother when present. These screenings occur three times, the first during pregnancy and the other at one and six months after delivery. They work with the family in their home about once per week to educate the parents in child care and development, ensure they have transportation to get to medical appointments and work, and even help solve housing and employment issues, all done by working with other agencies as needed.
Many client families are at risk for diabetes, so Maternal and Child Health watches for it among all client family members. Diabetes is more likely among some of our minority populations because of genetic propensity, diet and exercise patterns, the cost of food (junk food is usually cheaper), and the huge change in environment they experienced when they moved to the US. They have gone from growing their own food to buying it from a bewildering array of choices.
Medical care is expensive so case workers help clients obtain health insurance. Last year 4,000 clients were assisted with insurance applications. Low income clients are assisted applying for SNAP food stamp benefits. These are working poor families impacted by the high cost of housing and poor public transit in Chester County.
About 52% of the children of clients don't attend preschool for a variety of reasons. Children with no preschool experience are at risk of doing poorly in school, resulting in reading at less than grade level as of fourth grade, which is a strong predictor of dropping out of high school and struggling in poverty as an adult. Therefore Maternal and Child Health provides the Parent as Teacher program where parents are taught child development milestones and practices to help ensure their child meets them. For example, fathers are taught how their children learn so they can then teach their kids how to manage their behavior. Screening services for development level are part of the program so its success is continuously measured.
One issue identified through this program was that these children are not ready for kindergarten because of all the new experiences hitting them at once, such as busing to school, being in a large group of unknown children overseen by an unknown adult, etc. Therefore, last year a new program was tested to acclimate these children to the kindergarten environment. The parents are helped with student registration for school. The child experiences a two week camp where they get to do all the new things that come with kindergarten: riding buses; being in a large group of kids; and the routines of school, such as lunches, naps, and class times. The program was designed and operated with the assistance of Kennett School District's Mary D Lang kindergarten center staff. The positive impact of the program was noticed by the teachers when school started this fall. Class disruptions caused by stressed out kids almost disappeared. With this successful test completed, the program is being scaled up this year.