Home visiting

This is public health

Expecting a baby can bring feelings of excitement, anxiety, joy, worry and fatigue all at once. It can be a pretty demanding time in a person’s life, especially if they have little support and few resources. Luckily, the Lake County Public Health Home Visiting Program can help. We are a convenient service that provides home or office visits to women during pregnancy and throughout the first year of their baby’s life. We also provide services to children with special health care needs up to the age of five. Our team consists of public health nurses, a family support specialist and a registered dietitian. The visits are designed to complement your appointments with a medical care provider. The home visiting team offers support and resources to families to help reduce the anxiety that can often come with pregnancy and change.

Some of the most common things that our home visiting team assists families with are questions about breast feeding, infant and child nutrition, parenting skills, and involving dads in the pregnancy or infant care. Our team will also do developmental screenings to determine if a child is on track with gross and fine motor skills, communication, and social and emotional growth.

We can connect parents and families to immunization services, the WIC program, applications for Healthy Montana Kids (formerly CHIP), birth control options, and support with housing, food, and transportation services. We also have experts that can help with selection and proper use of a car seat based on the age, weight, and height of a child.

Home visiting is not new to public health. For over a century, nurses have delivered services to individuals and families in their home. In Montana, what began as a pilot program in the mid-1980’s has evolved into the Public Health Home Visiting program as we know it today. Across the state, public health professionals are providing services to pregnant women and children through home visiting programs with positive results. Home visiting continues to evolve and will always be a vital component to ensure the health of the community. 

For more information about the home visiting program, please contact the Lake County Public Health Department at 883-7288, or visit our website www.lakecountypublichealth.org.