The Infant Welfare Society of Evanston is expanding its Family Support Program in Skokie through a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services.

The grant awarded IWSE about $472,000 for the expansion. The Family Support Program currently provides weekly, hourlong home visits to 60 families in Skokie with children ages 0-3. The grant will create 54 more home visiting slots, Program Director of Family Support Tiffany Ajayi said. 

“The research in our community states that there are so many families within our age parameters that could qualify for programming that are most at risk, so our goal was to make sure that we had enough slots to serve the families,” Ajayi said.

The program also includes child developmental screenings and support, parental stress assessments and group socializations, among other services. 

In addition to expanding the number of family visits, Ajayi said IWSE is also creating a newborn encounter specialist position. The role was created in collaboration with Endeavor Health and the Perinatal Family Support Center at Evanston and Highland Park Hospitals. Hospital staff will identify families they believe are good candidates for the Family Support Program, and the newborn encounter specialist will speak with the families, walking them through the pregnancy progress and introducing them to IWSE’s programs.

“That newborn encounter specialist will explain our program to the family, versus just handing families a brochure,” Ajayi said. “It’s more personal now to actually establish that trust from the very beginning.”

The perinatal program and the Family Support Program previously had a partnership in which the hospital team would recognize high-risk pregnancies and refer those families to IWSE’s programs. Janet Winslow, supervisor of the Perinatal Family Support Center, said what is considered a high-risk pregnancy varies but can be determined from a maternal medical risk or a fetal anomaly.

Previously, after a family was recommended to the program, they needed to contact IWSE if they were interested. Now, the newborn encounter specialist will remove that responsibility from the parents and more directly explain how IWSE can support the family.

“(The Family Support Program is) a wonderful free community resource, and part of the scope of my team’s role is to connect patients with resources in their community to support them and their families once their pregnancy episode, as we call it, has concluded,” Winslow said.

However, Winslow said often when her team has recommended IWSE’s programs, there have been low numbers of uptake by families. She said this can be due to the families simply being busy and not finding the time to contact IWSE.

Winslow and Ajayi said the goal of the newborn encounter specialist would be to have the families meet someone from IWSE right after they’re referred. Ajayi said by enrolling children right away, they are being set up for success in their future learning.

“Birth to 3, specifically, is the foundation for early learning, and the work that IWSE is doing to let the communities know about enrolling your child in a high-quality program is important to receive support in the very beginning,” Ajayi said.

Family Support Specialist Krystal Wilson said she used the Family Support Program after she learned about it while working in a separate IWSE program. She said she saw a lot of developmental progress for her children during their time in the program.

Wilson said the home visitor her children were assigned worked with both of her kids differently based on their needs. One child was delayed in her speech, so they worked on speech communication. Her other child worked with a focus on physical activity using birth motor activities.

“The home visiting program, which serves families and children from 0 through age 3, is phenomenal because those are critical years of development, socially, emotionally, physically,” Winslow said. “It really does make a difference. It makes a difference in terms of how the kids perform in preschool and then school and kindergarten readiness.”

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