Navigating health care, including behavioral health care, can be challenging for families in need. Great Circle, one of Missouri’s largest nonprofit providers of behavioral health services for children and families, recently received a three-year grant from Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH) to expand its Healthy Families St. Louis program to reach more vulnerable, high-risk women, infants and children. This three-year grant allows Healthy Families to align with FLOURISH’s priorities by bringing supportive professionals directly into families’ homes and connecting them to services that address behavioral health needs, including trauma and post-partum depression.
“We are honored to be part of the Infant Mortality Reduction Initiative,” said Vince Hillyer, Great Circle’s president and chief executive officer. “We know that when mothers and infants are effectively supported and have access to both physical and mental health care, infant mortality drops and families thrive.”
Great Circle has provided the Healthy Families program in the St. Louis area since 2013, working specifically with mothers who have experienced chronic stress, poverty, trauma, physical, sexual or emotional abuse, and substance use, as well as supporting their young children. Using the Healthy Families America (HFA) model, Great Circle’s staff focuses on improving parenting skills, monitoring maternal and infant health issues, reducing child abuse, and supporting positive child development. HFA, a program of Prevent Child Abuse America, is a nationally recognized, evidence-based home visiting model designed to work with overburdened families who are at risk for adverse childhood experiences, including child maltreatment.
Through MFH’s grant, Great Circle is addressing FLOURISH priorities specifically around health communication, health care navigation and behavioral health. More mothers are being connected to quality medical and behavioral health services, prior to, during and after pregnancy, as well as their infants and children up to age three. Frequent home visits foster improved parent-child interaction and child health, and parenting skill-building. Regular screenings of mothers and their children also help identify potential physical and behavioral issues, and Great Circle staff can provide referrals to appropriate health resources.
The grant helps Great Circle to expand their existing reach. According to Ellen Bruns, Healthy Families St. Louis supervisor, “With this funding, the program proposes to provide HFA-complaint home visiting services to a minimum of 125 women and infants over the course of the project period.”
Great Circle is just one of many organizations who have received collaborative grants from MFH to create programs that will help reduce infant mortality in St. Louis. If you are interested in helping to address challenges like these for St. Louis families,