Maternal and child health services provide information and support to new parents and families.
Maternal and Child Health Nurses are qualified in general nursing, midwifery and family and child health.
Available services include:
- Information on infant feeding - both breast feeding and formula feeding
- Introduction to solid food and general nutrition
- Immunisation
- Childhood illness
- Guidance on prevention of childhood injury
- Sleeping and settling
- Behaviour management and positive parenting.
To make an appointment with a Maternal and Child Health Nurse call 1300 368 333
To organise a key ages and stages appointment for your child, complete a request for a callback form.
The service includes a growth and development review at ten key ages and stages.
This includes a home visit and centre consultations at:
- 2 weeks
- 4 weeks
- 8 weeks
- 4 months
- 8 months
- 12 months
- 18 months
- 2 years
- 3 1/2 years
Child referrals may be made to health and allied professionals.
Your child may be referred for:
- physiotherapy
- speech therapy
-
audiology
-
child psychology
- paediatricians
- and early intervention services
Nurses refer to a range of family and adult services including:
- financial and relationship counselling
- domestic violence services
-
women’s health
-
general parenting courses
- early parenting centres
- support with anxiety, PND and difficulties transitioning to parenthood
Information about early childhood services are available at Maternal and Child Health centres.
New parent groups offer first time parents an opportunity to meet other local parents. Joining a parent group is a great way to learn more about child health and services available in your community.
The free Maternal and Child Health App connects families with trusted information on child and maternal health.
App features include:
- Nora, the app’s digital assistant, can answer most common child health queries
- a library of information on popular health and development topics
- click-to-call contacts
- prompts for upcoming MCH consultations
- regular updates and messages.
This free app can be personalised and is available for all Apple and Android smartphones.
Download the Maternal and Child Health App
Sleep is a common issue that affects many of our families with children from birth through to school age. We recognise that sleep is an important part of your child’s development as well as the overall wellbeing of your family.
The Sleep and Settling Program is aimed at supporting parents and caregivers through information sessions and educating families on the latest evidence-informed practice. These sessions will cover topics including normal sleep patterns and routines, how development age impacts sleep, age-appropriate sleep strategies, common challenges and family support.
The FREE sessions are held in a safe and relaxed space for parents and caregivers to explore their concerns with opportunity at the end of the session to ask any questions in relation to their situation. If you are unable to find the answers you are looking for in the information session, one-on-one support can be provided through outreach by one of our team of Sleep and Settling Consultants.
We aim to meet the needs of our community by providing both online and in-person educational sessions, running both morning and afternoon at multiple locations across our Council including:
- Mooroolbark
- Upwey
- Yarra Junction
- Healesville
These sessions will be broken down into three separate age groups to address sleep challenges to age specific development. The age groups for these sessions include:
- 0 – 6mth
- 6 – 12mth
- 18mth+
How to sign up for the program?
If this is a service that you think might be able to help you or if you just want to gather a little more information about you baby’s sleep, please complete our expression of interest form below.
Sleep and Settling Program Form
Alternatively, your Maternal and Child Health nurse can help book you into a session at your upcoming appointment.
We would like to accommodate all families, partners and carers, so if you have older babies and children on the move please arrange alternate care if at all possible.
For further queries, please contact us at sleepandsettling@yarraranges.vic.gov.au and our team will get back to you.