Mental health therapy. Financial literacy education. Breastfeeding classes. Essential items for babies, such as diapers, formula, wipes and car seats. Thanks to a state program that took effect in 2023, these services and much more are available to expectant mothers and mothers with babies or young children in Allen County.
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report from the Indiana Governor’s Public Health Commission states that Indiana’s public health metrics were in the bottom half of states in the United States.Indiana had the third-highest maternal mortality rate in the United State, according to
a 2022 report from the Indiana University Public Policy Institute. In 2021, per a
report from the Indiana State Department of Health, over 500 babies in Indiana died before their first birthday. Going by that same report, from 2017 to 2021, the infant mortality rate in Allen County was 1.07 percent, one of the worst in the state.
In direct response to the report from the Indiana Governor’s Public Health Commission,
Senate Enrolled Act 4 became law in April 2023. This effort culminated in
Health First Indiana, which is a partnership between the Indiana State Department of Health and county health departments across the state that provides $75 million in funding to local health departments.
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Healthier Moms & Babies provides an array of programs, resources, and education.Maternal and infant health are one of six “core public health services,” as identified by Health First Indiana.
To coordinate with Health First Indiana, the
Allen County Department of Health established
Health First Allen County, which started this year. Under the umbrella of Health First Allen County, numerous community partnerships have been formed and continue to form, all with the focus of providing great public health for Allen County residents. Funding that comes from the Indiana State Department of Health, which is nearly $9 million in total, begins with Health First Indiana and is allocated by Health First Allen County.
Local leaders say this is a significant shift from the past.
“The state until recently provided very little funding to local health departments such as ours,” says Matt LeBlanc, communications director at the Allen County Department of Health. “Part of Health First Allen County includes a public health grant program, through which groups or agencies in our community can receive funding we provide to help in public health areas such as maternal and child health.”
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ECHO works with expectant teens and teen parents, both women and men, to attain stability and to be good parents.In Allen County, many services that would typically be provided by a public health program are provided by area nonprofits. Mindy Waldron, deputy health commissioner at the Allen County Department of Health, says because those organizations already exist and have programs in place run by experts in their fields, the department opted to fund those programs through grants, rather than start their own programs from scratch.
“One of the many tasks we were given was to do work around maternal child health,” she explains. “For this first year, we chose to grant out some of our funding to existing entities doing work in that realm to come alongside them and assist with the great work they are doing.”
In all, Health First Allen County awarded grants to 29 organizations in 2024—among these are five organizations that support maternal and child health. They include
Healthier Moms & Babies,
Lutheran Social Services of Indiana,
Associated Churches of Fort Wayne & Allen County (
A Baby’s Closet and
Journey Beside Mothers),
Bridge of Grace Ministries, and
A Mother’s Hope.
Healthier Moms & Babies
A total of $110,000 was granted to Healthier Moms & Babies, which provides an array of programs, resources, and education. In addition to the funding from Health First Allen County, Healthier Moms & Babies receives money from the
Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), as well as from private foundation grants and philanthropic contributions. Funds received from Health First Allen County are used for first-time mothers in Northeast Indiana, and HRSA money is used to support women who live in Allen County zip codes with the highest rates of infant mortality. (46802, 46803, 46805, 46806, 46807, 46808, 46809, 46815.)
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Healthier Moms & Babies provides an array of programs, resources, and education.“Those [federal and state] funds have really allowed us to expand our services,” says Paige Wilkins, chief executive officer. “We served, I think, last year close to a thousand women who were either pregnant or in postpartum. Before we tapped into state and federal dollars to do that, our programming was extremely limited.”
Wilkins says that the bulk of programming consists of home visits, which are done by nurses or family advocates who walk alongside women during and after their pregnancy until the baby turns two. Women are connected to local resources, and Healthier Moms & Babies works with women to remove barriers that prevent them from having healthy pregnancies and healthy birth outcomes.
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Paige Wilkins, Chief Executive Officer Healthier Moms and Babies“Most importantly, what we do is provide confidence and empowerment to these women so they can make some really life-impacting changes so they can have a strong foundation for their family,” Wilkins says. Healthier Moms & Babies also provides therapy and doula services.
“All of our programs provide wraparound services that address the leading causes of infant and maternal mortality,” says Wilkins.
According to the
World Health Organization, the leading cause of infant mortality is preterm birth. Wilkins is proud of the impact that Healthier Moms & Babies has had in reducing preterm birth rates among women it works with.
A March of Dimes report states that from the years 2019 to 2022, the preterm birth rate in Allen County was 10.5 percent. Statewide, it was 10.6 percent. Wilkins says that women who receive help from Healthier Moms & Babies have a preterm birth rate of about seven percent.
“That really says something, because we’re serving the highest-risk women in our community.”
Lutheran Social Services of Indiana
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ECHO works with expectant teens and teen parents, both women and men, to attain stability and to be good parents.Fort Wayne-based Lutheran Social Services of Indiana (LSSI) believes strongly that education can create hope and opportunity. In fact, they operate using an acronym based on it–
ECHO. Through ECHO, pregnant teenagers and teenagers who are parents can access one-on-one case management to help them complete their high school education, which could be either earning a diploma or receiving a high school equivalency (HSE) certificate. Completing high school is not the end goal, however. ECHO works with expectant teens and teen parents, both women and men, to attain stability and to be good parents. ECHO serves teenagers throughout Allen County.
“When we meet with them one-on-one, we are assessing barriers that might prevent them from attending school, that would ultimately either put them behind or not be able to graduate on time,” says Angie Phillips, LSSI prevention services manager and overseer of the day-to-day operations of the ECHO program.
ECHO, says Phillips, uses an evidence-based curriculum that centers on parenting skills, healthy life skills, nutrition and more. The curriculum is taught, one-on-one, by a case manager who is trained in social work. Once the baby is born, the focus is shifted to the health of the infant.
The results speak for themselves, says Angie Moellering, LSSI president and CEO. Ninety-eight percent of participants stay in school, more than 90 percent graduate or earn an HSE certificate, and all participants (as applicable) improve their parenting skills and get optimal prenatal care.
An Indiana Department of Education report states that high school graduates are able to find jobs easier, make more money, have a higher life expectancy, and are less likely to be engaged in criminal behavior. It’s also notable that no baby born to an ECHO parent weighed less than the national birth weight average in 2022. Moellering says that these statistics are significant.
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Through ECHO, pregnant teenagers and teenagers who are parents can access one-on-one case management to help them complete their high school education.“Nationally, when a young woman or young man becomes a parent in high school, they have about a 50 percent chance of completing high school and that’s just because of all the challenges of parenting and the challenges of high school, and you put them together,” she says. “We know that walking alongside the young men and women and helping them with outcomes for their babies and for themselves makes a huge difference.”
Funding from Health First Allen County, which totaled $50,000, has been crucial, Moellering explains.
“I think that this is really a great example of the state recognizing that we need more public health dollars. This is an excellent example of how it worked all the way from the funding at the state legislature to the Allen County Department of Health and then out to human services organizations.”
Associated Churches of Fort Wayne & Allen County
Associated Churches of Fort Wayne & Allen County offers two ministries for moms, including pregnant women, and babies– Journey Beside Mothers and A Baby’s Closet.
Journey Beside Mothers consists of women who give support, free of charge, to mothers (and families) of babies and young children, with the goal of helping them and their families attain and sustain emotional health. Some Journey Beside Mothers volunteers serve as mentors to expectant and new mothers. Playgroups are also offered—there, new and expectant moms can meet other moms and connect with them and their babies and children through informal fun and play. Journey Beside Mothers volunteers are not professionals–they are just women who want to help other women. To become a mentor, they have to fill out a form on the Associated Churches website, and then someone contacts them with the next steps, one of which is training.
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A gathering for moms and their children put on by Journey Beside Mothers.More than 95 percent of Journey Beside Mothers participants are Medicaid eligible, says Julie Reece, director of Journey Beside Mothers, but being on Medicaid is not a requirement for being a program participant. For a number of them, Reece says, the program is their only true resource and support.
“We train mentors to come alongside mothers who just have no support for the most part,” says Reece. “A lot of the moms we serve just don’t have the kind of family, friends, or social support that is so necessary after having a baby.”
Training centers on mental health, self-care, nutrition, healthy living, budgeting, and parenting, and the core of the training is relationship building, Reece says.
Parents who participate in programs that teach them about parenting and nutrition, who show up to prenatal and well-baby appointments, who participate in childbirth and related classes, and who keep immunizations current for their baby or child earn coupons from A Baby’s Closet. These coupons can be used to obtain essentials, such as clothing, diapers, car seats and more. Many local
service providers participate, thus enabling people to earn coupons at numerous locations. The key is that coupons are earned, not just received– A Baby’s Closet does not provide handouts, says Vicki Stephenson, director of that program.
“They have to take responsibility to take good care of themselves and their families, and it encourages them to do just that,” she says. This ministry was created, says Stephenson, to encourage expectant mothers to get the necessary prenatal care and then to attend well-baby doctor’s appointments after their baby is born.
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Vicki Stephenson leads a tour of A Baby's Closet
Both Stephenson and Reece say that funding from Health First Allen County ($60,000) has been vital to helping Associated Churches continue to help moms and babies in the Fort Wayne area.
Garry Pook, finance director for Associated Churches, has the data to back it up. Client visits to A Baby’s Closet increased from 3,476 to 7,348 from 2022 to 2023, and new clients served went from 350 to 508. The number of coupons earned/redeemed skyrocketed from 8,754 in 2022 to 14,366 in 2023; the value of items redeemed went from $82,066 in 2022 to $134,677 in 2023; and the value of items donated grew from $65,185 in 2022 to $74,965 in 2023. Similarly, the number of clients served by Journey Beside Mothers was 116 in 2022, and that number grew to 236 in 2023. The number of mentors increased from 18 to 22 in that same span.
Bridge of Grace Ministries
Bridge of Grace Ministries received $50,000 from Health First Indiana. They provide numerous programs, but the program that the grant was earmarked for is its
early childhood education program, led by Kelli Packnett. The emphasis of the early childhood education initiative is maternal and child health, with an emphasis on child development and infant and childhood mental health.
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Kelli Packnett, Bridge of Grace MinistriesPacknett, a former teacher with Fort Wayne Community Schools, explains that the initiative she leads supports childcare providers in the area. She says that Bridge of Grace just finished building an early childcare center called the
Early Years Academy, which is a partnership between Bridge of Grace and
Westminster Preschools.
More broadly, Bridge of Grace has a partnership with
SCAN.
“They do a lot of the family stuff, and we do a lot of the childcare stuff,” Packnett says.
The Bridge of Grace early childhood education initiative is meant for children ages zero to five—all of the early years. It utilizes
Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ), which are screening tools for development.
“What we are working on and why we received this grant was to be able to use this screening tool in as many places as we can so that caregivers know more about a child,” says Packnett.
Bridge of Grace works with approximately 60 family home childcare providers in the 46806 zip code. Through this service, participating providers take care of children in their homes.
“What this does is allow there to be early intervention when necessary, says Packnett.
Depending on screening results, children and their families may be referred to a pediatrician, to
First Steps, or to someone else in the community who can provide support.
“For those children who don’t show any big red flags, we’re still supporting childcare providers by just connecting them to resources and then ensuring that our children are moving along in order to improve kindergarten readiness outcomes,” Packnett says.
Through all of this work, Bridge of Grace is collecting data that Packnett hopes will lead to better and more improved early interventions, when needed, in the future.
“Maybe we’ll find out we need more speech therapists,” she says. “How do we get more speech therapists in a pediatric environment for the littlest ones? That’s what we’re working on—supporting childcare providers and also just trying to figure out what the data says and how we can help kids.”
More funding is always needed, and Packnett is grateful for the grant money Bridge of Grace received.
“We are just so blessed to think that Allen County had this opportunity, that they saw this opportunity as something that was needed to fund,” Packnett says. “From a health perspective, it was incredible and it is needed.”
The creation of this article is in part thanks to a collaborative effort to provide more local coverage of public health matters through support from the Knight Foundation.