New Collaboration Supports Families and Children

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BY ANNA WILSON
BLUE RIDGE HEALTHCARE

MORGANTON - Blue Ridge HealthCare and Appalachian Family Innovations, a division of Appalachian State University, have teamed up to improve the physical and emotional well being of babies born in Burke County and their parents.

With the help of a Duke Endowment grant, renewable annually for up to three years, the ultimate goal of the collaboration is to strengthen families in an effort to prevent child abuse.

In North Carolina, 37 children died at the hands of their parents or caregivers in 2005. Nearly 90 percent of these children were under 4 years of age. By joining with parents around the time of birth to provide support, trained workers can assist them in eliminating negative factors that could potentially lead to child abuse and neglect. The program can also assist them in building protective factors that promote healthy childhood outcomes. This is the aim of the partnership.

The grant, which could total $830,000 over a three year period, will help Blue Ridge HealthCare introduce a screening tool and a process for making referrals of high needs parents to Appalachian Family Innovations and to other parent support resources in the community.

For Blue Ridge HealthCare’s Grace Hospital, where a new women and children’s center will be opening soon, the grant will help fund one full-time nurse home visitor and a part time medical social worker.

“Our goal is to have a nurse visit the home of every mother and baby within 24 to 48 hours of delivering here,” said Tina Castellanos, Director of Maternal and Child Services at Blue Ridge HealthCare. “Previously, the home visiting nurse, Cora Brown, worked from our Home Health Division. When she retired, there was a void. People loved her and we want to offer that same sense of security again to our mothers and babies.”

The nurses will be able to identify resources for the family, offer access to long-term services and make sure the baby receives medical follow-ups if necessary.

“It’s very exciting for us at the hospital,” Castellanos said. “It’s a very positive program for the community.”

Appalachian Family Innovations specializes in serving high needs children and families. Through its Catawba Valley Healthy Families program, high needs, first-time parents in Burke County learn healthy parenting skills and receive support in addressing their risk factors. Some of these inadequate family/community support, marital or family problems, single and/or teen parenting, inadequate income, mental health issues, substance abuse and others.

“The grant allows us to double the size of our staff that works directly with Burke County families,” said Healthy Families Program Coordinator Jeannie Ownbey. “We’re excited to be able to serve twice as many families. Last year, our limited funds allowed us to serve only 19% of the families referred to us.”

Catawba Valley Healthy Families is a prenatal to five-years, voluntary home visiting program serving overburdened first-time parents. The visits begin sometime between a mother’s third trimester of pregnancy and the baby’s third month of infancy.

Parent training is one of the primary services offered by Catawba Valley Healthy Families. A typical family enrolled for three years will receive 120 hours of in-home contact by a Family Support Worker. By the time parents graduate from the program, they have consistently demonstrated healthy parenting skills.

Additionally, the program connects families with community resources to help make life a little easier. “We want to help reduce as many stress factors as we can for overburdened, first-time parents,” Ownbey said.

The program also tracks the child’s development and offers parents information on keeping their baby on track so that eventually they are well prepared to enter school and “to succeed in life,” she said.

“One of the reasons the agency sought to expand the Catawba Valley Healthy Families program was because of the impressive outcomes achieved with the first 125 families served to date,” said Dr. Gary Timbers, Director of Appalachian Family Innovations. “Further, the collaboration between Blue Ridge Health Care and Appalachian Family Innovations just makes good sense because quality early health care and effective parenting are interrelated in producing healthy outcomes for children and their families.”

To date, the Catawba Valley Healthy Families program has been funded by charitable contributions from local donors and by grant allocations. The Duke Endowment grant will fund one half of the amount needed for the expanded effort. “To do our part, we have to double our local donations if we are to sustain the Healthy Families program”, said Timbers.

Established in 1924 by industrialist and philanthropist James B. Duke, The Duke Endowment is one of the nation’s largest private foundations. Its mission is to serve the people of North Carolina and South Carolina by supporting selected programs of higher education, health care, children’s welfare and spiritual life.

For more information on the collaborative program, call 433-7176 or visit www.familyinnovations.org.

To search for information on a variety of health topics, please visit our web site at www.blueridgehealth.org.

ANNA WILSON is a writer and graphic artist in Blue Ridge HealthCare’s Marketing and Public Relations Department.

Red Flag Campaign
If you see red, the sale is dead

BY Caitlyn Throneburg
FREEDOM HIGH SCHOOL

MORGANTON - Tobacco is dangerous, and is often underestimated because the health effects may not appear for years. Kids under 18 don’t think of the consequences when they pick up a cigarette or can of snuff. The law should to protect them.

The Red Flag campaign is an attempt to prevent the sale of tobacco to minors. Tobacco retailers should know that minors have a red border around their driver’s license photo, a red stripe across the bottom of their license, and a red NCDMV logo in the upper right-hand corner of the license.

This campaign, paid for by the Health and Wellness Trust Fund, is important because every year in North Carolina, 24,000 kids become new smokers. And once they’re hooked, 70 percent of teen smokers say they wish they had never started. But it’s not just cigarettes; the law applies to spit tobacco also. And 15 percent of high school boys in this state use snuff or chewing tobacco.

I care about the kids in my high school and my town. That’s why I’m part of the Teens Against Tobacco Use Club at Freedom High School. I don’t want to see my classmates become addicted to nicotine-a drug more addictive than heroin. I want all of my class of 2009 to graduate and have a healthy future--free from tobacco and free from diseases caused by tobacco--such as heart disease, cancer, and emphysema. These ailments claim more lives than the combined total of deaths from alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murder and suicide.

The Red Flag Campaign can make a positive difference - a life or death difference. Please, remember, the campaign slogan, “if you see red, the sale is dead.” The underage tobacco sale should die, not the young people in this state

The second largest employer in Burke County, Blue Ridge HealthCare serves a four-county area and includes Grace and Valdese hospitals, Blue Ridge Home HealthCare, Grace Heights and College Pines Health & Rehabilitation Centers, Grace Ridge Retirement Community, Phifer Wellness Center and a number of physician practices.