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Nurturing Healthy Bodies and Brains

Nurturing Healthy Bodies and Brains:
Allen County Public Library’s Partnership with WIC
View webinar video --  Section starts at 6:15 and ends at 13:30
About
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Pamela Martin-Díaz
Manager, Shawnee Branch/Allen County Public Library
Co-author, Early Literacy Storytimes @ your library®: Partnering with Caregivers for Success
Email: pmartin@acpl.info
Librarians from the Allen County Public Library hold sessions at WIC offices about how to help adults help young children develop their early literacy skills as they talk, read, write, sing, and play together.

ACPL Staff go to WIC sessions that have at least 10 adults signed up. Sessions are mandatory for WIC participants and reactions from parents have been, for the most part, positive.

The skills that children need to be successful in later life are those that are taught by adults who interact with them when they talk, read, write, sing and play together. Together we can help adults feed children’s brains – literally and figuratively!
How It Works
View webinar video --  Section starts at 6:15 and ends at 13:30
WIC Nurtures Bodies
Poor nutrition during life in utero and a child’s early years causes a variety of significant problems including:
  • Delays in physical growth and motor development
  • General effects on cognitive development cause lower IQs (by 15 points or more in severely malnourished children)
  • More behavioral problems and poor social skills upon entering school
  • Decreased ability to pay attention, deficient learning, and lower educational achievement.

ACPL Nurtures Brains
Research shows us that children:
  • Who start out behind usually don’t catch up. There is a 90% probability that a child who is a poor reader at the end of first grade will be a poor reader at the end of fourth grade.
  • Who enter school without the requisite skills for success are at risk for being poor readers, which has a deleterious impact on their outcomes as adult learners and wage-earners.
  • Need contact with caring adults to thrive.
Target Audience: Low to Moderate Income Families participating in the WIC Program
Why WIC?
  • WIC is happy to partner with ACPL and we expect they would be happy to partner with other libraries
  • Access to 10,000 families throughout the county
  • Participants are required to attend mandatory quarterly classes to receive vouchers for WIC-approved items
  • WIC then added the ACPL program into lineup of approved classes
  • WIC is willing to let us know when they had at least 10 families signed up so they would avoid going to programs with no attendance
  • This is an audience of people whom the library has historically had a hard time reaching
Active involvement of participants
ACPL's model is based on family strengths:
  • Do more of what families are already doing
  • Do what families are already doing in a slightly different way
  • Encourage adults to talk, sing, read, write, and play with their children in ways that help children develop early literacy skills
  • Tie the activity to later reading (decoding or comprehension): Focus on background knowledge and vocabulary
Partnerships with other organizations
Partnership with WIC
  • Federally funded Special Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP) for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
  • Provides nutritious foods, nutrition counseling, and referrals to health care and social services
  • Serves low-income pregnant, post-partum and breastfeeding women, infants, and children up to the age of 5 who are at nutritional risk.
Assessments
The program's next steps include:
  • A viable evaluation plan: Confidentiality issue with WIC and contacting participants again
  • Train more librarians to hold sessions
  • Institutionalize the program in both agencies

This program is reproducible elsewhere as long as there are staff from the local WIC and library who are willing.
Cultural Proficiency
Rockin’ Rhymes: ACPL produced spiral bound book  of nursery rhymes in English and Spanish
Works through existing infrastructures: WIC Offices
What is WIC?
  • Federally funded Special Supplemental Nutrition Program (SNAP) for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
  • Provides nutritious foods, nutrition counseling, and referrals to health care and social services
  • Serves low-income pregnant, post-partum and breastfeeding women, infants, and children up to the age of 5 who are at nutritional risk.