With a strong focus on outreach, parent support, family risk/health screenings, and case management, the Family Centered Services offered by Mercer Street Friends addresses issues related to disparities in health outcomes among minority women and children.
Family Centered Services includes targeted outreach to engage participants for services/activities such as pregnancy testing, health insurance enrollment, various health screenings, referrals, parenting support, Safe Sleep education, the distribution of personal care items, and more.
Parenting Education/Family Support include workshops that are offered periodically. Content focuses on the benefits of pregnancy and parenting behaviors related to parent and infant/child health, wellness, and safety. These workshops include offerings such as smoking cessation; tobacco/drug/alcohol use during pregnancy; breastfeeding; emotional well-being for pregnant/postpartum women; the impact of intimate partner violence on families; parent education; stress management; mindful parenting, and more.
The Stress Management Toolkit For Parents provides opportunities for families to practice new parenting and self-care skills, get relief from pervasive life stressors that they have identified, and gain access to vital healthcare information and resources. These changes positively impact family wellness, resilience, and self-sufficiency.
How We Do It
The challenges faced by families in their day-to-day lives can be overwhelming and complex. Our programs respond with simple strategies that include offering partnerships that address social-emotional, spiritual, physical and intellectual issues. Families have opportunities either at home or at our Parent Child Center to participate in an array of individual and group learning sessions focused on self-care, family goal planning, stress management, parent and child wellness care, healthy parent child interactions, nurturing parenting routines, screening for health and wellness care, child development, and referrals for community services.
“Routines are what I needed to learn about. I needed help with getting the children up and ready for the day and they now know what to do. Sometimes I think about what we learned in our sessions, and it reminds me of what we should be doing.”
