Health Unit dedicated to creating better programs for parents & children

Children have amazing potential, right from the moment they are conceived. Helping them reach their full potential is a parent's full time job. At the Health Unit, we have a long history of providing information and support to families with young children so that they have an opportunity to reach their full potential. Recent funding in Early Years programs, both within the Health Unit and elsewhere in the community, are being directed to programs and services for these same families.

At the Health Unit, we are implementing a number of four-year plans around healthy pregnancy, early child development, injury prevention, and family abuse prevention. We are evaluating and revising our prenatal classes, we are continuing to offer weekly Baby Talk sessions and are looking at offering future mail outs related to the age and stage of children. We are participating in the Child Fairs sponsored by the Upper Canada District School Board, providing information on nutrition, immunization, car seats and children's growth and development milestones.

We are continuing to offer the Healthy Babies, Healthy Children program which provides information, referral and support to parents and parents to be in their homes. With almost 1600 births in Leeds, Grenville and Lanark each year, this means a lot of telephone calls and travelling to home visits. We are now involved in the Province of Ontario's Infant Hearing Program. Some of our public health nurses are trained in advanced hearing screening for infants and will be involved with counselling families whose infant is found to have a hearing impairment. Please direct any questions around infant hearing screening to the Infant Hearing Program office at 1-800-267-7875.