What is WIC?
The WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program is funded through a federal grant. The grant money is used for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.
WIC Provides:
Health screening including:
• Weighing and measuring to monitor growth.
• Identifying health risks.
• Checking blood iron levels.
• Assessment of diet and eating patterns.
• Immunization referrals
Nutrition and health education such as:
• How to use foods to improve your family's health.
• Parenting, especially as it pertains to feeding your children.
• Healthy lifestyle choices - avoiding tobacco, alcohol and other drugs.
Breastfeeding support including:
• Information about the unique benefits of breastfeeding.
• Information about how to continue breastfeeding when returning to work or school.
• Encouragement and help to continue breastfeeding.
• Connecting with other breastfeeding moms.
Help getting other services including:
• Medical and dental care.
• Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF).
• Housing and energy assistance.
• Drug and alcohol treatment.
• Head Start
• Access to food via food banks, community meals, etc.
• Find information on additional programs for which you may be eligible
Checks for nutrient-rich foods
• Each client receives checks to buy over $50 worth of healthy foods each month.
• Women and children receive checks to buy milk, cheese, cereal enriched with iron and low in sugar, juice high in vitamin C, eggs, and peanut butter or beans.
• All babies receive checks for baby food fruits and vegetables and baby cereal. Fully breastfeeding babies receive checks for additional baby food fruits and vegetables, baby cereal, and baby meats. For babies who are not breastfed, WIC provides checks for iron fortified formula.
• During summer months at participating WIC clinics, WIC clients can receive packets of Farmers Market Nutrition Program checks that allow them to purchase up to $20 per person ($40 per household) of Washington grown fresh fruits and vegetables at authorized Farmers Markets.
Quality WIC
The Whatcom County Health Department's WIC program has 7.5 FTEs the staff is multi-lingual, have long connections to the community, offer award winning services, have extensive education including years of education investment by the County, and earn a living wage. With the exception of one recent hire, the WIC team has worked and built the WIC program together at the Health Department for twenty years.
Wendy Porter, WIC Certifier
"The County has trained and encouraged continuing education to a team of employees that have worked together for a twenty year period. This has cultivated an expertise in counseling, knowledge of local resources and a WIC program recognized regionally for providing exceptional services for the community. Community clients trust our team to provide them with appropriate and accurate information and referrals to help them better the quality of their family’s lives. They trust us with intimate information about their families, as we are the people they often see most frequently that are in a position to help guide them."
Erica Lamson, WIC
"The Whatcom County Health Department is unique around the state in terms of expertise and years of experience. This team is very highly educated, committed, and experienced. At many other WIC clinics across the state, WIC certifiers are required to have a high school diploma and on-the-job training in nutrition. Our certifiers have four-year degrees and many years of nutrition training. The information and counseling provided to clients under these two scenarios are vastly different. There is also high turn-over at many other WIC clinics around the state. This leads to higher program costs through retraining and poorer services. This team is highly capable, efficient, knowledgeable, caring, and passionate about work they do for mom and babies in our community. This synergy would be difficult to duplicate."
Jackie Russell-Stear WIC Nutritionist
"I have been with the Health Department for 18 years and am now serving the third generation of clients. During that time there have been many studies, policy education, training, improvement plans, charts, surveys. . . and although all of this has value, the real value of the Health Department is in the services we directly provide for the community. Our programs work. Hospitals and doctors in the community rely on us to help new mothers access valuable resources including breast feeding supplies and our farmer's market voucher program has the highest redemption rate in the state."
Allison Williams, WIC
"The quality of service will diminish if WIC is not provided through the Health Department. It could take years to return to it's current level of quality if ever. We have years of training and investment in our current staff and it will take years to achieve the same knowledge base when starting over with new staff. Our low turn around, due to a living wage and job security is the main reason we have such an award winning staff. Our current team is very efficient and has high performing workers. Because we have done our job for such a long period of time, we can focus on details and special problems that our clients present to us instead of struggling to get the state's basic requirements done in each appt. We are able to be flexible, meeting many community needs like fitting in surveys or other requests from the Health Department. We can be more innovative and I think more productive than a staff with a lower level of training. If services need to be delivered in a different manner in order to save money, we would be the folks to come to envision these changes. The state will undoubtedly incur a higher cost of monitoring the program in Whatcom County if it moves to a new site. Our audits have always shown very few problems with our program in comparison to no Health Department WIC programs."
