The Southeast Utah Health Department (SEUHD) has a wonderful program called Parents as Teachers (PAT) that focuses on parent-child interaction. PAT Nurses, Gwen Anderson and Amy Ruggeri both took the time to come into Castle Country Radio to share details about the new program.

“So we are a new program to this area. The Office of Home Visiting for the State of Utah done a risk assessment for all of the counties and Carbon and Emery scored the highest score on those risk assessments. So they kind of said if you write this grant, we’ll help you cover it. The Parents as Teachers program has been around since the 80s,” said Ruggeri. The PAT program focuses on helping children learn, grow and develop to their full potential.

“With our local Parents as Teachers program, we are a national affiliate so our Office of Home Visiting through the state had requested that are parent educators or home visiting teachers be RNs (Registered Nurses). They felt like with the risk assessment health-wise for kids in our community Registered Nurses would be the best fit. We serve pregnant mothers, pre-natal, and children up to age 5 or kindergarten entry,” explained Anderson. The PAT Educator provides activities to inspire interactive play, conducts developmental screenings and will connect with the parents to share other valuable community resources.

“We work within the health department so we like to make sure that families who are eligible are signed up and enrolled in Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program that’s going to be more wrapped around throughout the health department. We want to monitor immunizations, we also connect families to other community resources like preschool, early intervention, RUCD Headstart and their home visiting programs,” stated Anderson. They also put parents in touch with local health care providers and pediatricians if those services are needed.

To be eligible for the program families have to meet the Quick WIC qualifications and meet some program risk factors. “We are a free in-home visiting program. We’ve kind of had to get creative with COVID-19 so we’re doing virtual right now. When we go into your home, we focus on three main areas, we focus on child development, we focus on child-parent interaction, which is kind of teaching parents games to play with their kids to help them developmentally, and we also focus on the family as a whole,” explained Ruggeri.

To apply for the Parents as Teachers program visit the SEUHD website at https://www.seuhealth.com/ under Clinical Services there is a PAT Referral Form that can be printed off, completed and returned to the SEUHD. Any questions about the program can be answered by calling (435) 637-3671 for Carbon and (435) 381-2252 for Emery.