Nurses help new mothers at home in Ukraine
Home-visiting nurses are visiting hard-to-reach families in their homes, thanks to a partnership between the Ministry of Health of Ukraine and UNICEF
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Three-month-old Lev and his mother Valeriya live in Korostyshiv, a city in the Zhytomyrska region of Ukraine. After giving birth, first-time mother Valeriya had many questions about care, vaccinations and breastfeeding. So she was relieved when home nurse Maryna Diharieva was assigned to visit the family.
"Recently, we were teething, so I needed professional advice. The home nurse was always in contact, even at 11 in the evening. In my view, her service is crucial, particularly because she's always in touch.”
Maryna visits Valeriya and Lev every two months. She works at the Primary Health Care Center (PHC) in the Korostyshiv district and has been working with children for over 30 years. As part of the Home Visiting Programme, Maryna and her nursing colleagues visit families with children in their homes to assess the child's condition and development, help to create a safe environment for the child and advise parents.
"A child is a huge happiness for a family, but also a big responsibility," says Maryna.
The Home Visiting Programme is a joint initiative by the Ministry of Health and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which aims to implement better care at home and improve the provision of care by qualified nurses.
Under the initiative, specialists known as home-visiting nurses visit families ten times in the first three years of a child’s life. If the specialist notices any risks, they draw up a plan and visit the family more often. Their home visits aim to improve on services offered at the PHC, where a pediatrician and a nurse may have only 15 minutes to check on a child and talk with parents, which is often not enough to fulfill the needs of a family.
“A home-visiting nurse can dedicate one or two hours to give a consultation and answer all the questions of young parents," explains Maria Filonenko, a pediatrician and curator of the programme.
"We cooperate with education, medical, rehabilitation and social service centers. Each home-visiting nurse can assess not only medical risks but also other psychosocial issues, and thus provide help. There is also an interaction between families, where one family can share tips with another.”
The nurses’ advice can be crucial – when Maryna next visits Lev at five months old, Valeriya hopes to discuss starting supplementary feeding with formula.
Expert advice
The Home Visiting Programme includes prenatal services and meetings with a mother-to-be in the thirty-second week of pregnancy. A nurse will visit the expectant mother's home to offer advice and prepare her for the hospital.
Oleksandra, who is expecting her third child, has also been relieved to receive Maryna’s services. And she is not the only one – when the nurse visits, six-year-old Olesyk and three-year-old Ivanka love to share their latest news and read new poetry to her.
Even after giving birth to her second child, Oleksandra still needed help and advice.
"When I picked the baby up, I realized that I still had questions,” she says. “You always need some kind of expert advice, especially when it's your first child.”
Home-visiting nurses also provide emotional support for families. During each meeting, the nurse asks the mother how she is feeling, how she has recovered from childbirth and how she finds communicating with her new child.
"If we notice any issues, a psychologist from the hospital or social services is ready to help offline or online," says Maryna.
Thanks to funds from UNICEF, the outpatient clinic in Korostyshiv has also received a car to help for home visits. Nurses can now visit families with children not only in Korostyshiv, but also in remote villages, where parents are unable to travel on their own.
Forty-two families with children and five pregnant women from the Korostyshiv district are now participating in the Home Visiting Programme. Another ten pregnant women are waiting for the 32nd-week milestone to meet a home-visiting nurse. On average, home-visiting nurses make around 30-40 home visits per month.
The Home Visiting Programme has already been implemented in the Donetska, Zhytomyrska, Kirovohradska and Kyivska regions of Ukraine, as part of a pilot project. In 2023, it will be expanded to seven more regions of the country – Odeska, Lvivska, Poltavska, Dnipropetrovska, Vinnytska, Rivnenska and Kyiv city.
>> Learn how home-visiting nurses in Pavlohrad support the families psychologically, advise on children's health and feeding.
