Fall 2020Your quarterly maternal and child health newsletter, provided by the Snohomish Health District's Maternal Child Health team. Stay up to date on local programs, topics, and resources for families and the professionals who serve them. In this issue... - COVID-19 Resources for Children and Families
- ChildStrive's Parents as Teachers Program
- Maternal Health Inequities
- The Burnout Experience: Tips to Overcome
- CityMatch/NEAR Collaborative Update
- Job Opportunity at Homeward House
- Snohomish Health District Program Updates - free COVID-19 class for childcare providers
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 Mother and Miyana, Kevin Ng
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News CornerCOVID-19 ResourcesSnohomish County is currently in Phase 2 of Washington State's Safe Start plan. For up to date general information about COVID-19 in Snohomish County, please see the Health District’s COVID-19 Information website.
COVID-19 resources for families and children:
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Featured Resource for FamiliesA Message from ChildStrive"Great news, Parents as Teachers has openings! PAT is a voluntary, ChildStrive home visiting program (we will come to you via the wonders of the internet and even assist with getting you connected to a device or internet during quarantine). Our engagement spans two years in the life of a family. We work with pregnant people, or those parenting children from birth to kindergarten age. We enroll families whose youngest child is under 3, although we serve the whole family. We also work with foster and kinship caregivers, and parents actively working toward reunification. The purpose of the program is to support early childhood development, including building healthy attachments. PAT Educators bring ideas for play-based learning, with an emphasis on the parent-child relationship as a protective factor. We work with you on your goals in parenting, and finding stability over the rough journey we are all on, with COVID-19! There is no cost to participants, and there are no hard income eligibility requirements."To learn more about enrolling in the Parents as Teachers program, call or email ChildStrive at (425) 245-8377 or ParentsAsTeachers@ChildStrive.org
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Maternal & Child Health NotesMaternal Health InequitiesA recent succession of documented racialized police violence and subsequent protests have brought long overdue public attention to the effects of racism on health. Maternal mortality rates present a stark and objective measure of racial health inequity. Black women in the U.S. are three to four times more likely than white women to die during or after delivery. This has been attributed to the societal conditions affecting overall maternal health, the physiologic effects of experiencing discrimination on a daily basis, and the tendency of white providers to not believe Black mothers' concerns.
One strategy that has been shown to combat the latter cause is patient advocacy by birth doulas. With COVID-19 threatening progress in birth equity, more doula services are moving online. To find out more about doula services for yourself or your clients, visit DoulaMatch and see the Health District’s message regarding COVID-19 resources for Snohomish County pregnant and postpartum families.
No one intervention can serve as the solution for this complex issue, and continuous conversations about how to transform our organizations and policies are crucial. As Elizabeth Dawes Gray, of Black Mamas Matter, wrote:
“Those of us who want to stop black mamas from dying unnecessarily have to name racism as an important factor in black maternal health outcomes and address it through strategic policy change and culture shifts. This requires us to step outside of a framework that only looks at health care and consider the full scope of factors and policies that influence the black American experience. It requires us to examine and dismantle oppressive and discriminatory policies. And it requires us to acknowledge black people as fully human and deserving of fair and equal treatment and act on that belief.”
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Featured Resource for ProfessionalsThe Burnout Experience: Tips to OvercomeDo feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job, and reduced professional efficacy sound familiar? If they do, that is the World Health Organization’s new definition of burnout which they say is a syndrome tied to “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
We have all had so many losses during this time. Many of us have lost jobs or are no longer doing the jobs we were hired to do. Many of us are no longer seeing beloved co-workers on a regular basis because we are needing to work from home. Some of us have lost friends and family members to Covid-19. Some of us are working with clients who are in quarantine and suffering financially, emotionally, or spiritually. All of us have had to change our daily lives and stay home more, cancel travel plans, postpone weddings and funerals, the list goes on.
In her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, Dr Rachel Naomi Remen writes about burnout and grief:
“The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. This sort of denial is no small matter. The way we deal with loss shapes our capacity to be present to life more than anything else. The way we protect ourselves from loss may be the way in which we distance ourselves from life. We burn out not because we don’t care but because we don’t grieve. We burn out because we’ve allowed our hearts to become so filled with loss that we have no room left to care.”
So, what can we do about burnout? Here are four steps to begin to recover from burnout. - First, take stock – track your stressors at home and at work. Take an internal inventory of how you are actually feeling. Sometimes having a supportive partner, group of peers, just a couple of co-workers, or a supportive boss who would be willing to connect with you on a regular basis can be extremely helpful.
- Second, enhance self-care and work-life balance. Make self-care a priority: get some physical exercise, laugh, socialize safely, play, smell the roses, pray, or practice mindfulness.
- Third, develop resiliency through relaxation training and stress reduction techniques. This step requires acquiring knowledge and then practicing the skills.?Try to improve your physical self-awareness by scanning your body for tension. You can try progressively tensing and then relaxing all of your muscle groups, which will help alleviate that tension.
- The last step is making a commitment to change. Decide to change something concrete in your current selfcare and work/life balance. Don’t just think about change, but commit to change and plan out how it will work. One effective way to make lasting commitments is to share them with someone who will gently but firmly hold you accountable.
The truth of the matter is that this pandemic has been harder on most of us than any of us imagined. Lots of people are really suffering. It is important to listen to your body and soul.
I will end with a quote by Mokokoma Mokhonoana:
“Relaxing brings weakness when done by a muscle; but brings strength, when done by a person.”
Courtesy of Sue Starr, Public Health Nurse and the Snohomish Health District Trauma-Informed Leadership Team (TILT)
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Groups at WorkCoalitions, Collaborations, & CouncilsCityMatch/NEAR CollaborativeIn July, the CityMatch/NEAR collaborative hosted Dr. Brenda Butterfield at the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) Quarterly event. Dr. Butterfield shared free, simple skills for coping with distress in her talk, How to Care for the Caregiver.
On Wednesday, October 28th Meyleen Velasquez, LICSW, of Hummingbird Counseling will join us to discuss cultural humility in the context of ACES. If you would like to receive updates about this event, please contact Laura Nay at lnay@snohd.org to be added to the CityMatch/NEAR mailing list.
Job Opportunity at ChildStriveChildStrive is looking for an Infant Mental Health Specialist to advocate for the needs of young children of clients participating in the Homeward House program. Homeward House in a voluntary program that provides wrap-around services and support for parents in dependency proceedings. This clinician will support the caregiving that infants need to develop secure attachments. Visit ChildStrive’s Careers webpage to see the full job description and find out how to apply.
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Program UpdatesChildren and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN)As part of the Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN) program, nurses visit families at their homes to provide information, support, and resources to families with children who have any special health needs, whether it’s physical, mental, or developmental.
CYSHCN Family Updates
A child who, until she was 11 months old, had most of her meals delivered through a feeding tube just had her feeding tube removed. She had inflammation in her lungs (bronchitis) as an infant and threw up so often that she developed an aversion to eating and drinking. After working with her, she eats solid meals. Her mom is still working on getting her to drink more fluids, but the little girl is happy, playful, and on track with her social, mental, and motor skills. One of the CYSHCN public health nurses visits the family to check her weight and overall development. She helps connect the family with resources and makes sure they have reliable medical care.
The same nurse visits another family in Everett. The oldest child has asthma and special education needs. The middle child was born with pneumonia and currently struggles with allergies. Their new baby sister is healthy but still tiny. The family just moved into an apartment after living without stable housing. In addition to finding housing, our nurse supported them in connecting with a medical home, so they now have a pediatrician who will provide quality care and refer them to additional help if needed.
Child Care Health Outreach ProgramClick here to take the free STARS Credit COVID-19 Class
Child care programs have a key role in slowing the spread of illnesses such as 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) and protecting susceptible children and staff. Due to closeness of contact between children and staff, preventing the spread of COVID-19 in child care has been challenging.
This COVID-19 In-Service Training has been specially developed for child care providers currently operating child care programs in Washington State during the COVID-19 outbreak. It outlines guidance for child care established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Washington State Department of Health (DOH). It also provides many practical ideas for applying the guidelines established by some local public health agencies in the State. All of the local health department links are readily available in the class so you can easily refer to the specific county guidance for child care programs.
Here's an informational flier on the class Welcoming New Members of the Maternal Child Health Team!Two Public Health Nurses joined the Snohomish District Maternal Child Health team this summer. Maddy McCaslin comes with experience as a Population Health RN, working with individuals who have diabetes on chronic disease management. Laura Nay has a background in clinical research and social services, as a women's advocate at a shelter for people experiencing intimate partner violence. They will be working with Maternal Child Health nurses Sue Starr and Lindee Tollefsen to support multiple maternal child health programs, including the CityMatch/NEAR collaborative, Trauma & Resilience, Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN), Universal Developmental Screening, and Access to Baby & Child Dentistry (ABCD).
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Thank you for reading! We plan to publish the next newsletter in December |
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The Dyad+ (plus) highlights the health of the mother-child dyad plus their family and support system. The health and well-being of the mother-child dyad is dependent on each other, and the importance of the pregnancy and postpartum period cannot be overstated. The health status of the dyad during this unique time has a persistent and long lasting effect on an individual's lifelong health, and therefore has a big impact on the overall health of a population. The primary caregiver, who may or may not be the biological mother, fills an essential role in the child's life that can help or hinder the child's potential, especially for children under age 5. Maternal and child health is essential public health. |
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Was this newsletter forwarded to you?You can subscribe to the Dyad+ newsletter by visiting www.snohd.org/notifyme |
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