Child Health

Child Health​

FIRST 5 Santa Clara County promotes equitable access to critical health needs, behavioral supports, and prevention and intervention efforts that ensure young children, prenatal through five years, receive the medical, dental, behavioral, and developmental supports they need to grow and thrive. In addition, FIRST 5 supports home visitation services through its collaborative of community-based organizations and providers who promote healthy parenting strategies and provide in-home support for vulnerable children, including children with disabilities, in our county.

Home Visiting Collaborative​

FIRST 5 Santa Clara County convenes partners representing home visiting programs across Santa Clara County monthly to align program delivery, maximize program capacity and referrals, share trainings, and work toward other shared goals. The Santa Clara County Home Visiting Collaborative, established in 2021, strengthens collaboration, impact, and sustainability of home visiting programs supporting families with young children in Santa Clara County.

Read our 2024 Home Visiting Expansion Feasibility Study, presented to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, here.

Download The Report

Improved Outcomes

Home visiting programs support parents and caregivers by meeting with families with young children 0-5 in their homes (or other familiar locations) to encourage healthy development and parent-child relationships and support families with accessing resources. Home visiting programs support improved outcomes in maternal and child health, school readiness, economic well-being, and parenting practices.

Available Programs

There are many home visiting programs available for pregnant and parenting families in Santa Clara County: Black Infant Health, Nurse-Family Partnership, Strong Moms, Strong Babies, Public Health Nurse Home Visiting Program, Milestones Home Visiting Program, Early Start Program, Early Head Start Home Visiting, KidConnections, ParentChild+ and the Teen Parent Support Program.

California’s new dyadic care benefit in the Medi-Cal program is finally recognizing this. It provides an opportunity for health care providers to consider the parent’s mental health and context during the well child visit and provide mental health and other support services to both the parent and the child.

Integrated Behavioral Health

FIRST 5 invests, alongside the Santa Clara Family Health Plan, Anthem Blue Cross, Santa Clara County Health and Hospital System and the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, to pilot implementation of a Dyadic Benefit through implementation of the Healthy Steps Model.

Healthy Steps

HealthySteps is a dyadic care model where a child development expert and behavioral health clinician (HealthySteps Specialist) joins the pediatric primary care team during a well child visit. They screen the child for a range of developmental, social-emotional and behavioral challenges, ask parents about their needs and well-being, provide guidance, and offer referrals to additional services – and follow up to ensure the family can access them. The pilot is supporting training and technical assistance provided by the University of California San Francisco to support implementation of the Healthy Steps model at Valley Health Centers, Bay Area Community Health, and School Health Clinics.

Dyadic Services

Dyadic services are a family- and caregiver- focused model of care intended to address developmental and behavioral health conditions of children and includes services provided to the parent/caregiver and child (known as a “dyad”). Dyadic services help improve access to preventive care for children and rates of immunization completion. They also address coordination of care, child social-emotional health and safety, developmentally appropriate parenting, and maternal mental health.

Mental Health

It is well established that a new parent’s mental health and wellness is tied to the healthy development of their baby. During the perinatal period, post-partum depression, food or housing insecurity or other sources of trauma and stress can reduce a parent/caregiver’s ability to bond with their child and provide a safe, secure and loving home. Because parent/caregiver’s mental well-being is so integral to the child’s development, it is thought that the parent and child should be treated as a unit in the health care setting. California’s new dyadic care benefit in the Medi-Cal program is finally recognizing this. It provides an opportunity for health care providers to consider the parent’s mental health and context during the well child visit and provide mental health and other support services to both the parent and the child.