Birth and Beyond

Birth & Beyond of Sacramento, is a non-profit health care agency whose main focus is to provide family support services in a form of family resource centers and home visitations where a personal home visitor is recruited from the same neighborhood they serve to provide the caregiver the help he/she needs on how to give a better care for the child. Their mission is to support the caregiver in all areas such as job referral and training, how best to communicate with other parents in the neighborhood, the best way to overcome obstacles that the family might be facing, and how to better use the community resources such as transit system or comprehensive health care services. All these services are provided until the age of five of the youngest child in the family. The family resource centers offers support in budgeting, parenting groups, health, immunization, overall child development, class sessions for anybody who would like to learn Spanish, English, Hmong, or Russian, and Play and Grow groups which are parent/child bonding classes through arts and crafts and kid connection. In addition to the family resource centers and the home visitations, families also have the support of the team of consultants and specialists such as Nurses and Family health counselors, joined together to coordinate a full range of services for the families. (www.birth-beyond.com/Content/Learn-Participate/Learn_More.htm).

The geographical area served by Birth & Beyond is the Sacramento County which houses nine different Family Resource Centers. Each resource center is responsible for certain zip codes areas of the Sacramento County. Many serve up-to five different zip code areas, however Meadowview Family Resource Center only serves the zip codes 95822, 95831, and 95832. (www.birth-beyond.com/Content/Locations/FRC_map.htm).

According to Heather Blanchard, Meadowview Family Resource Center serves one hundred and thirty families, in which fifteen are Spanish speaking families and five are English speakers. Home visitation services are provided to ten families. This center has the capacity to serve two hundred families.

Birth & Beyond is open to anyone who would like to improve the care of their children. However, since Meadowview Family Resource Center is located on Florin Road, the population that frequents this facility the most is Spanish speakers. The youngest client at this facility as of now is a fifteen year old female who started attending at this facility at the age of thirteen and the oldest person is forty-one. This facility is visited by 99% females and .6% males. Out of these .6% males, five are single parents. The clientele base in this facility