Family Solutions celebrates 25 years of service

Aug. 14—Marquetta Hamilton, a mother of six, has appreciated encouragement and support from an Orangeburg-based family-wellness program that has provided help to families for the past 25 years.

"All my children have been in the program. I'm actually participating in the program right now with my last child. I have gained a lot of great knowledge, encouragement and enthusiasm. A lot of great things have some through it. I have also built friendships and leadership with all of the staff," Hamilton said.

The strength and well-being of families has been the cornerstone of Family Solutions' policies for the past half century. In celebrating 25 years of service this year, the program has continuing to work toward eliminating perinatal health disparities among its future goals.

Hamilton receives services through Family Solutions' Healthy Start program, a leader in the promotion of maternal and child health, especially in the areas of infant and maternal mortality reduction.

She started the program in 2007 with the birth of her first child.

"I must say I have recommended family members to the program and outside people who I know have children. Those ladies do an outstanding job. The staff is tremendous. You can pretty much talk to them about anything. They try to help out in any way possible," Hamilton said.

"If they can't help you, trust me, they'll get you in the right direction to get you to the help that you do need. I recommend them to anyone. I've worked with quite a few of the young ladies," she said.

Family Solutions Executive Director Lamikka Samuel credits the support of the community and the dedication of hardworking staff for the organization's longevity.

"I believe it has a lot to do with people, like the staff itself. Some of the people who are here may not have been here on day one, but we have some people here who've been here over 15 years. So that says a lot about how the staff feels about the work that we do here," Samuel said.

"I attribute that to the leadership of the program as well because it's no secret that we had the same leader for a large portion of that 25 years. So the leadership and her team played a huge part in our longevity," she said.

Samuel continued, "It's the heart of the people who work here that made the program successful, but then it's also the people in the community seeing us, hearing us and seeing us as a resource and supporting us throughout the years. That is what has kept us going."

Samuel took over as executive director in January 2021 following the retirement of Virginia Berry White in December 2020.

Family Solutions, a program of the South Carolina Office of Rural Health, is the name for an umbrella of services that include Healthy Start, an infant and maternal wellness program; Opportunity Knocks, a male involvement program; and Nurse-Family Partnership, a home visitation program for first-time mothers.

Healthy Start, which Family Solutions administers along with the NFP, works to reduce infant mortality in Barnwell, Allendale, Bamberg, Hampton and Orangeburg counties. The NFP program serves Orangeburg County.

Healthy Start received a federal grant in September 1997 from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, the Health Resources Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services to reduce infant mortality in the rural, underserved counties of Allendale, Bamberg, Hampton and Orangeburg.

Samuel said it feels great that a grant-funded program has reached a 25-year milestone.

"I don't know of a lot of grant-funded organizations who've been able to sustain with the same grant funds. There are some who've had to look for other funding streams, but we've been able to maintain Healthy Start from the Healthy Start grant, and that's big. So I'm just over the moon with excitement and looking forward to what we plan to do for the next 25 years," she said.

Samuel continued, "Healthy Start has indeed seen some tremendous growth from the beginning to this point. We're moving with the times. Whatever the times call for, we try to equip ourselves so that we can provide the community with what the need is in the moment."

Over the past 25 years, LCHC has addressed perinatal disparities with services ranging from outreach and case management to health education and interconceptional care.

Family Solutions is supported by a Community Action Network (CAN) and a Perinatal Action Network (PAN). The FLSC has a partnership with its obstetric providers in its service area. They meet together each month to talk about families' clinical and psychosocial needs.

'All the lives we have touched'

Samuel said the implementation of a Healthy Steps initiative at Bamberg Family Practice is among its newest initiatives. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control is funding the placement of a Healthy Steps specialist at the Bamberg facility.

Together with a national network of sites, Healthy Steps works to transform pediatric primary care by promoting nurturing parenting and healthy development for babies and toddlers.

Tracy Golden, senior program manager at Family Solutions, said, "I'm excited just thinking about all the lives we have touched. When I look back from just starting and thinking about all of the lives and the impacts that we've had in the communities that we've been in, some of the old clients and where they are now, I get teary-eyed even thinking about that."

Romaine Stephens, a community specialist with Family Solutions, said the organization has been adept at adapting to client needs which have naturally evolved over the years.

"That's big, being able to adapt to what the people needed in '97 to what they need in 2022 — and with a pandemic in between," said Stephens, who recalled the story of a particular family who was served by Family Solutions.

"When they moved down here from Connecticut, Lamikka at the time was the case manager for the family, and she was doing recruitment. She gave me the family, and she was like, 'I'm going to introduce you to this young lady. She's going to be your new referral.' When I met the young lady, she didn't have any family here, she didn't have any support," Stephens said.

"Healthy Start was the only support. She didn't have a mom here, a father, the father of the baby left her while she was pregnant, her house burned down while she was here. Because she was a part of Healthy Start, they were able to help her with housing," Stephen said, noting that the young lady was also to be provided with a ride to her prenatal appointments.

"After that, she was able to have a successful pregnancy. The baby is healthy. He is 10 years old now, and she was able to get married, have a family, purchase her first new home, all in the period of time she was a part of the program. Just to come from where she started, and to see her where she is, things like that just make you happy," she said.

Samuel said, "Tracy and I also shared an experience. This particular young lady needed a lot of support. Sometimes people think of success as being these major things like, 'Oh, she's a lawyer or a doctor.' No, she's not that, but she was able to raise her son. He just took to Tracy like Tracy was his other mother."

Samuel continued, "Tracy and I would visit her together at times. We would both take turns checking on her when we weren't going together. Her son is one of those who just graduated from high school. She's still doing what she needs to do.

"Of course, she still struggles with some of the issues she had when was a part of our program, but she hasn't allowed any of that to stop her from pushing her children, and from trying to do better for her children."

'Our greatest achievement'

Stephens said Family Solutions provides a plethora of classes for its clients, all designed to help them build their families in a productive and sustainable way.

"We provide child birth classes, breastfeeding classes and diabetes education classes. We do reproductive health classes and a preconception series that we have been offering to the community. We also have a postpartum centering group (headed up by a nurse practitioner) for moms right after they have their babies to give them that added support that they may need," she said.

The organization also offers hypertension classes to make sure clients understand the signs of high blood pressure during pregnancy.

"We also do a reproductive life course group quarterly, where we bring in the social workers and the nurses to focus on different topics around stress, other health issues," Stephens said.

Samuel said home visiting is also an integral part of the program, with Golden adding that home visitation helps the program to meet clients where they are.

"So it's easy, and they're more receptive to the education that we're offering because they're more comfortable in their environment. It can be grandma's home, or wherever they're comfortable, the library, that we will provide them the services," Golden said.

Samuel said the male involvement program addresses the integral role of fathers.

"We provide the intense services to the males who have children who are a part of our program, but then we also offer our services to men within the community. Currently, we're working on developing a collaborative with some of the prominent men within our service area just to help us move our goal a bit further when it comes to supporting the males in our program," the executive director said.

Doula services are also being worked on for implementation within the program.

"Recently, we had five of our staff to be trained as community-based doulas, but now they have to actually observe two births and go through their mentoring phase. So they're in the process of doing that now," Samuel said.

"And then we hope to hear in September that we've received additional funds from HRSA in order to fully implement doula services at Family Solutions because we did apply for a grant through HRSA," she said.

Stephens said COVID forced the organization to have to change its operations, including changing to a virtual delivery format for some education courses.

Samuel said, "It actually allowed us to offer more than they would have gotten. When we were at a point when we weren't doing any face-to-face visits, we didn't want to lose contact with them at all. So we probably developed too many sessions in their eyes to keep them engaged with us."

She continued, "We've found that it's really been successful. It's helped the staff as well because sometimes the staff can get overwhelmed with different things, too. So having those group sessions virtually has really helped. So we just chose to continue them that way. We do some things in person, but for those sessions that we started doing virtually, they have continued to be virtual sessions."

The executive director said that the program's expansion of services beyond infant and maternal health over the years is noteworthy.

"That expansion of services to the community has been our greatest achievement. Maintaining relationships with partners locally and statewide. Then I would also have to say just having a team of dedicated people on staff for so long is an achievement," she said, noting Family Solutions has 18 staff members.

'Our number one goal'

Samuel said the next 25 years will hopefully include Family Solutions' work to tackle the continued disparities seen in perinatal health.

"Until we see that Black births aren't at such a risk as they are right now, we'll continue pushing the way we've been pushing. That's what we want to see. In everything that we take on, it may look like we do a lot, but it's not enough. There's always something else that we could be doing. So we plan to just continue looking for other opportunities to impact the health of our community," she said.

A focus on preconception health will be emphasized.

"We know that health does not begin in pregnancy. Whatever it was that you had before you got pregnant, you've got to deal with it while you're pregnant. So with us focusing on preconception, we want women and families to be as healthy as they can possibly be before they go into a pregnancy so that won't be one of the things that causes complications to the pregnancy, or the outcome of the pregnancy," Samuel said.

Stephens leads Family Solutions' reproductive health specialist team.

"They've done a really good job of getting into the school systems to provide that preconception education, talking about things like hygiene. People don't think about hygiene and what hygiene has to do with your health. So that's one of the things that we've really done well with this year, pushing those preconception messages out to the community," the executive director said.

Family Solutions will hold its 15th annual Infant Mortality Awareness Scholarship Luncheon on Friday, Sept. 9.

The event will be held at noon at the Edisto Fork United Methodist Church Family Life Center and coincides with September's observance of Infant Mortality Awareness Month.

Speakers include Arialle Kennedy Smith, a doula and founder and owner of Momma Magnolia; Megan White Millhouse, a family nurse practitioner; and Tameca Wilson, a director of maternal infant health at the March of Dimes.

Brandy "Beasy Baybie" Henshaw, a motivational speaker and media personality who has spoken at a past luncheon, will host this year's event.

Samuel said while Family Solutions held a special 25th anniversary celebration for the entire community in the parking lot of its Orangeburg site on July 21, there will be other celebrations, too.

"That was the kickoff, but we plan to continue having little things. We're going to recognize and celebrate the 25 years during our luncheon in September. Then in October, which is the month of our actual 25th year anniversary, we're going to celebrate as well," she said.

Samuel continued, "We've done a lot of celebrating the community, celebrating our partners, but during October we're going to celebrate ourselves. We're going to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done these past 25 years. It'll be like a staff appreciation."

Contact the writer: dgleaton@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5534. Follow "Good News with Gleaton" on Twitter at @DionneTandD

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