Program to team up nurses with new mothers

A program new to the Lowcountry will pair registered nurses with low-income, first-time mothers, from pregnancy to toddlerhood.

More than a hundred people with backgrounds in medicine, education and social work gathered Friday to learn about the Nurse-Family Partnership.

Among them was Charleston County Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley. "This is a critical need for teen parents and their babies who will come to our kindergarten in five years," McGinley said. The district had 190 pregnant students last year, she said.

The partnership's Veronica Creech said the program has been proven to save more than $5 for every $1 invested by reducing burdens on other services, such as mental health and the juvenile justice system, and also by increasing mothers' and their families' employment opportunities.

Three trials have been conducted, one dating to 1977.

The program is voluntary for mothers, and a grant from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of South Carolina will provide $500,000 for three years to pay the nurses' salaries.

While the program does not necessarily discourage second births, nurses work with mothers to take the lead in family planning. "Sometimes these women never get to think, 'What do I want to be one day, and who do I want to be there with me,' " Creech said. Nurses are used because they are trusted authority figures, she said.

The Nurse-Family Partnership has programs in more than 20 states. First Steps of Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties and the regional S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control are in the final stages of applying for the program.

James Ella Collins, director of Charleston County First Steps, said, "The program has been proven to improve pregnancy outcomes, improve child health development, and to improve the parents' economic self- sufficiency."

Reach Jill Coley at 937-5719 or jcoley@postandcourier.com.