The weather the last several months have played havoc on the monthly council meetings. It is the first time that Bennington has missed three Council Meetings in a row. The data discussion around the release of How Are Vermont’s Young Children and Families had to be postponed until after Early Childhood Day at the Legislature.
In April and May, we will have a two-part discussion. It will be a way for us to assess what we are collecting across programs and agencies. The intention will be to build on the discussion of How Are Vermont’s Young Children and to give us a better picture of Bennington. Very often, we have great anecdotal data and numbers but we do not have data that shows us the trajectory of change in this region.
Five proposals using direct services funds were approved. They are Book Express from the Bennington Free Library, a post-partum support group Nurturing Moms at Catamount Connections, Parent group using strengthening families at the Readsboro Pre-school, the BCCCA Family Fair, and a Devereux FLIP training for childcare providers. Presentations about the grants will be given to the full council at the May and June meetings.
In January, the maternal child health coalition and the women’s health initiative decided to combine their meetings going forward. The Women’s Health Initiative is part of the Blue Print with the specific goal of getting women LARC’s without having to wait. There were several areas identified to work on over the next year including maternal depression.
