Women’s Care Center helps to build strong families

“I feel like I owe my motherhood to you!” said Hadjer, one of roughly 150 moms who participate in parenting classes each month at the Women’s Care Center, which has two locations on Columbus’ east side. 

With 1 in 9 babies in Franklin County now getting their start at the center, no similar facility serves more pregnant women or new moms. And after parents make a choice for life, the center offers them ongoing help  to build strong and self-sufficient families.

The Women’s Care Center has always offered incentivized parenting classes, with the promise that each mom can earn the items needed to take care of her baby.  This year, despite the pandemic, the center kept this promise and remained open for in-person counseling and ultrasounds while adding virtual parenting classes.  

An important addition made to virtual classes is the new   series “Raising Kids with Character,”  in which moms and dads learn practical ways to instill virtues in their young children. And children learn to be kind, respectful, peaceful, creative, honest and hopeful.

Moms such as Hadjer, with toddler Jennah and baby Hana, participate in the curriculum together. Each class ends with a reading of a popular children’s book to reinforce the character trait being discussed, and each family receives a copy of the book to build their at-home library.

Kay Gibbons, longtime friend of the center and a founding board member, described the parenting curriculum, “from a mother of six, this is a win!”  and “a great way to discipline and teach children with love and respect.”

Through classes, Hadjer also earns coupons to acquire newbaby items. “With my first child, we didn’t have anything,” she said. “When I go to the Crib Club (to redeem the coupons for baby items), I cry every time because I am so proud that I have earned these items for my daughter.”

Another mom said, “With the other parenting classes, my daughter saw them as just mine. She called them ‘Mommy’s classes.’ With “Raising Kids with Character,” she asks me every week, ‘When do we get to go to our class?’ Reading books together at the end makes her feel like it’s her experience, too.”

Twenty-two counselors and nurses staff the Women’s Care Center; many have been with the center since it opened in 2008. Because of this, moms such as Hadjer have formed a  trusted relationship with a counselor that continues throughout her parenting journey.

And with 1,861 babies born in 2020 to moms aided by the Women’s Care Center, staff members look forward to a future generation of kids with character who can impact the community in a positive manner.