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Indian River County Healthy Start Coalition, Inc. — 2003 -04 TLC Newborn Program IRC Board of County Commissioners — Children 's Services Advisory Committee B. PROGRAM NEED STATEMENT (Entire Section B not to exceed one page) a) What is the unacceptable condition requiring change ? b) Who has the need ? c) Where do they live? d) Provide local, state or national trend data, with reference source, that corroborates that this is an area of need. What: Babies do not come with instruction books . In today' s system of health care, the mothers of newborns are released from the hospital within 48 hours, and in many cases is less than 24 hours . Unlike past generations , support systems, such as the newborn ' s grandmother, aunts or even available health care providers for these mothers are in many cases non-existent, particularly in the State of Florida, that has many transplant residents, leaving the mother and family to fend for themselves . In many cases, there is nowhere to turn for parents of newborns to help with even the most basic of infant care issues, such as : handling, feeding, nurturing, safety and growth/brain development. The TLC Newborn program fills this void and gap of care, education and support. Who : Indian River County residents have been averaging about 1 , 100 births each year. Of these births in 2001 , 65 .4% were from white mothers, 16 . 6% black, 16 . 7% Hispanic and 1 . 2 % "other" mothers . In 2001 , almost half, or 45 % of all births are covered under Medicaid or indigent funding, which amounts to 506 babies being from low income families . Of all the births in 2001 (the latest year for complete birth data), 39 . 3 % or 442 babies, were to unwed mothers, with black unwed births at 67 . 9% . In terms of education status of the newborn ' s mother, 25 . 5 %, or 287 of the mothers did not have a 12th grade education or GED . For Hispanic mothers, 61 . 2% did not finish high school. These figures above primarily address families at higher risk, but race, income status, lack of two parent homes, and education level are not the only risk factors for addressing the needs of an infant. How to properly take care of a baby crosses all socio and economic boundaries . Where : The TLC program serves mothers and families of newborns from the entire county, with 20. 3 % of the births in 2001 from the Vero Beach zip code (32960), 16 . 9% in the Oslo — southeast zip code (32962), 13 . 8 % in the Gifford/Winter Beach/Wabasso zip code (32967) , 12 . 2% in the Sebastian zip code (32958) and 9 . 1 % in the Fellsmere zip code (32948). Other parts of the county encompass the remaining percentage of births in 2001 . The information reported above is derived from birth outcome data provided to Healthy Start from the Florida Department of Health — Vital Statistic Office and shown in the Coalition ' s 2002 Needs Assessment and Service Delivery Plan. There are no programs or services that provide "universal" support for all families of newborns besides the TLC Newborn program in Indian River County. The TLC Newborn program has 96% participation of all families of newborns over the last three years, which amounts to almost 1 , 000 families each year receiving services addressing the needs of their infant. a) Identify similar programs that are currently serving the needs of your targeted population ; b) Explain how these existing programs are under-serving the targeted population of your program. The TLC Program is totally unique not only in Indian River County, but in the state of Florida. The program is unique due to it being universal in nature, and touches almost every family of newborns in Indian River County. Healthy Start Care Coordination and Healthy Families have a similar target populations with regard to the infants and families of newborns, but only serve those families who are scored "at-risk" on the Healthy Start/Families Postnatal screen and consent to program participation. They are primarily home- based case management programs , with the majority of services beginning prenatally. In 2002, Healthy Start served 306 infants and Healthy Families - IRC 131 infants and families . 5