Healthy Growth & Development

The Healthy Babies Healthy Children program is a free, voluntary home visiting program for families from pregnancy until the child goes to school. The program supports pregnant moms, their partners, and their families.

Free telephone, email or in-person support is available to all families and caregivers of babies to help with infant feeding, parenting questions, community support and resources. To speak to a Public Health Nurse about caring for yourself or your baby, call 519-900-9600 Ext. 3250

Public Health Nurses facilitate free drop-in programs, in partnership with local EarlyON centres.

Parents and caregivers of infants and toddlers are all welcome. It is an opportunity to connect with other families, EarlyON staff and talk to a Public Health Nurse about:

• Breastfeeding and infant feeding
• Infant growth and development
• Healthy eating, including the introduction to solids
• Parenting strategies
• Child safety and sleep questions
• Care of mother and mental health screening
• Community resources and referrals

For more info, including clinic times and locations, please visit Well Baby Clinics 

The Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit offers a combination of in-person and online prenatal classes.

For more information about classes, including dates and fees, please visit Prenatal Classes

The Health Unit is committed to understanding the needs of parents and caregivers and developing programs that meet the needs of families in our communities. One way we do this is through the Infant Feeding Survey.

The survey asks about how you have been feeding your baby and about programs and services designed to help with this. It can be emailed to you and takes 5-10 minutes to complete.

From 2019-2024, the Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit received a Baby-Friendly designation. As we move forward, we have redirected our efforts into creating a Baby-Friendly Committee focused on being inclusive of all families and caregivers in our community.

For parents using Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit services, this means you can expect us to:

• Provide information to help you decide how to feed your baby
• Offer services to your family whether you are breastfeeding or bottle feeding your baby
• Support you to breastfeed for as long as you choose
• Welcome breastfeeding in all areas where we provide services and will provide a quiet space for breastfeeding if you would like one.