Growing Up Healthy history

Growing Up Healthy

The Rice County Growing Up Healthy initiative was organized in 2006 with the intention of engaging in a 10 month long planning process to better understand the needs of low-income families with young children (birth to age 5) in Rice County. Prior to coming together for the Growing Up Healthy planning project, each of the individual partner agencies was already actively engaged in improving the lives of young children – some in the health sector, some in early childhood development, some in community connections, and some in basic social services including safe and affordable housing. The planning project allowed these active agencies and organizations to identify the needs of low-income families through a grass-roots process and to engage in a new level of partnership benefiting the entire community.

In our planning process we were able to access information about the needs of low-income families with young children from the families themselves. Our goal is to put that information to use within the county to improve the health and quality of life for all children from birth to age 5, both by sharing the information with as many entities as possible so the needs are addressed, and by using the information to modify our individual and collaborative practices to better meet the needs of young children and their families.

Project Goal

A detailed analysis of the qualitative information from our dialog series led us to conclude that the issue in Rice County is not so much a lack of programs, services or resources, but rather a disconnect between the people who need to access existing services and the people, agencies and systems that provide them.
Additionally, the repeated requests for advocacy and relationship building seem to indicate that families with young children are not just feeling disconnected from the system, but from each other and from the community at large. There is a body of research that supports the idea that community connectedness (also referred to as social connections, social ties and social capacity) can improve health outcomes on many levels. It has been linked to lower

In the Community

levels of child abuse, maltreatment and neglect (Horton, 2003), improved disease resistance, longer life, and improved health outcomes following stressful events (Berkman, presentation to the NIH, 1997). Therefore, it is our contention that if vulnerable Rice County families are better informed and connected (to each other, to existing services, to their neighborhoods, to the community as a whole), and if the community is engaged with these families in new and different ways, the result will be more positive health outcomes for families, and specifically for children from birth to age five.

Our project goal is to increase the level of community connectedness experienced by marginalized families in Rice County with children under the age of five.

Strategies

In an effort to maximize the impact of our work, the Rice County Growing Up Healthy project is targeting  3 specific neighborhoods within the county that have a high number of low-income families with children under the age of 5. One of the neighborhoods identified is in Northfield (Viking Terrace) and two are in Faribault (Cannon River Mobile Home Court – on Hulett, and the area of apartment buildings south of Division St. that includes: Greenwood Place, Halter Apartments, and the Four Seasons complex).

Our first strategy is to create and train a cohort of neighborhood leaders prepared to serve as advocates within the county. Their purpose is to help communities organize and families navigate “the system” and provide a human bridge over many of the existing gaps – connecting people, programs and resources. A cohort of 12 leaders are learning to transform their latent leadership skills to participate as aspiring organizers in their neighborhoods, becoming familiar networking experts, skilled in resource identification, community-building and ombudsman advocacy roles. Currently, the team of leaders in each neighborhood is working to assist the neighborhoods to identify and address specific needs that are unique to their neighborhoods and are of concern to a critical number of residents in the neighborhood.

Our second strategy involves adapting the system to meet the changing needs of young children and their families.

Helping Out

Through consistent contact between the Growing Up Healthy Advisory Board and the cohort of neighborhood leaders, we hope to create a dialog between the directors/coordinators of the partner agencies and the community members who utilize the programs. In addition, we will be setting a policy level agenda for the next several years – analyzing which policy changes will have the greatest impact on families with young children, which ones are the most feasible, and which ones can be implemented at the local level.

Our third strategy involves educating the wider community about the connections between health and affordable housing, social connectedness, social policy, and wealth vs. poverty. We plan to use a multi-media approach, which may include video screenings, a website and presentations to service organizations.