When Selena Garcia began working with the Jefferson Area Comprehensive Health Investment Program (CHIP), public health nurse Amy Chenoweth “became part of the family.” Along with a family support worker, Chenoweth helps Garcia with appropriate health information and resources for her sons, 6-week-old Caíson and nearly 3-year-old Cesar.
During her visits, Chenoweth interweaves questions about the children’s health in a conversational, casual method. “I don’t want the visit to seem like an examination by pulling out a checklist,” says Chenoweth. Yet she finds discreet ways to find out how the children have been eating and sleeping, about their dental and medical care. Cesar even gives her the opportunity to test his motor skills when he brings out a ball to play.
It’s not just about the kids, though. “Amy’s been getting on me to get my GED,” says Garcia, who is 20 years old. While Caíson is an infant, Chenoweth will come to visit with the family every two weeks at their home in Southwood, an Albemarle County trailer park just south of the Charlottesville city line. Recently a reporter was invited to tag along to watch the home-visitation program in action.
Home visits and face-to-face interactions are at the core of CHIP, a State program started locally in 1991 to serve children under 7 whose families are within 200 percent of the federal poverty line, or $40,000 annually for a family of four. Every child is assigned both a nurse and a family support worker, who work together to ensure that the child is getting appropriate health care, and that the family is receiving available benefits. Currently CHIP serves approximately 380 children in the Jefferson Area (Charlottesville, Albemarle, Fluvanna and Louisa) with its staff of 11 family support workers and six nurses, on a roughly $1 million budget. For the past two years, the program has had a waiting list, now approximately 40 families long.
As a voluntary program (unlike many interventions by the Department of Social Services), CHIP works to build an ongoing, consistent relationship with families to help make them self-sustaining—a goal that Director Judy Smith admits can be hard to quantify.
Despite that difficulty, the State legislature deems the Jefferson Area CHIP worthy enough to receive a $46,000 increase in funding. The increase is due to the program’s high performance, which is measured through criteria like the number of face-to-face interactions (5,568 last year).
“Almost all of our families want to be good parents,” says Smith. “But they have difficulty either accessing resources or simply knowing what the resources are. They may be five minutes away from where you live, but if you don’t know how to make it work for you, it’s not accessible.”
“Change is often slow in this program,” says Chenoweth. “But change happens. And it’s terrific when you get to see it.”—Will Goldsmith