Healthy Families

Healthy Families of Bartholomew County is a voluntary home visit program designed to promote healthy families and healthy children through a variety of services including child development, access to health care, and parent education.  We believe that parents are the best authority in determining their family’s needs; that all families have strengths which need to be recognized; that every child should reach his or her potential; and that available services should begin early to support the needs of the family.

Healthy Families provides two main services, assessment and home visiting. Healthy Families partners with the families to support, enhance, and strengthen their well being by tailoring services to the individual needs of the family.    

Assessment
Highly-trained Family Resource Specialists assess families using a standardized tool which evaluates risk factors for abuse, neglect, and isolation during a conversational interview.  Depending on the outcome, the families are linked with the most appropriate supportive service and community resources.

Home Visiting
Highly-trained family support workers offer weekly, or as appropriate, in-home visits to model, educate, and provide research-based parenting information. 

Home visiting services begin prenatally or postnatally and last until the child’s third birthday. Services focus on parenting education and support as well as community referrals as appropriate. Families receive curriculum, watch developmental videos, and observe positive parent-child interaction modeled. Families must live in Bartholomew County and deliver at Columbus Regional Hospital or be on WIC.

Healthy Families uses a variety of state-approved parenting curricula to customize the program to fit the individual needs of the family.

Families enrolled in Healthy Families celebrated at the annual Christmas party which included snacks, a goodie bag and arts and crafts such as making picture frames.