The Children’s Clinic,
Serving Children and Their Families (TCC) is a non-profit community
medical clinic that has been serving low-income families
in the greater Long Beach area for almost 70 years. Last year, TCC was able
to provide services to over 17,000 patients during over 55,000
patient
visits to children, adolescents, and adults. The Clinic continues
to provide medical care and counseling for well-child visits, acute and chronic
disease
management, community outreach and health education, immunizations, laboratory
testing, prescribed medications, linkage to community resources, and evening
and Saturday morning hours.
At The Children’s Clinic, Pediatricians not only give shots,
dispense medication and make kids feel better, but they provide prescriptions
for success.
TCC’s Reach Out and Read Program is in its 9th year of providing books
to children in the waiting room and instilling the love of reading at an
early
age.
Schools have a developed literacy curriculum for children older than five
years of age. However, there are limited resources for children age
five and younger.
Pediatricians and Pediatric Nurse Practitioners at The Children’s
Clinic are uniquely positioned to develop a literacy curriculum
for this at-risk population at a young and critical age. Simple interventions
by Pediatricians
cost very
little and are effective ways to promote early literacy.
Reach Out and Read, originally developed at Boston Medical Center and implemented
at more than 100 sites throughout the country, addresses the barriers
that keep children from entering school unprepared to learn. By promoting
early
literacy through this on-going reading program, The Children’s
Clinic is
helping to improve the quality of life for children and their families.
The program consists of modeling reading by volunteers in the waiting
room; training clinicians on the importance of literacy as well as
promoting books;
and giving children during their well-child visits a developmentally
and culturally appropriate book to take home along with instructions
to parents
on how to read to their
child. A recent study showed that parents involved in Reach Out and
Read were four times more likely to read or “book share” with
children.
By reading to children in the waiting room, educating physicians-in-training
on how to promote literacy in their future pediatric practices, and
by giving children during their well-child visits a developmentally
and
culturally appropriate
book to take home, along with directions to parents on how to read
to their child, The Children’s Clinic is helping children reach their greatest
potential.
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