Coastal Kids Home Care

About us:
Coastal Kids has just celebrated it's second full year of providing nursing and therapy services to children on the Central Coast. Our home health agency is the only free standing non-profit agency specializing in Pediatric and OB patients in California. Two local nurses co-founded the agency and have hired staff that have devoted their careers to the care of children.

To receive services from Coastal Kids, all that is needed is a physicians order. Reimbursement for services is excepted from all major insurance companies and Medi-Cal. All pediatric/ OB patients are accepted on service regardless of their medical coverage, and never turned away.

Nursing care ranges from checking on newborns just sent home from our local neonatal intensive care units, children with newly diagnosed medical conditions whose parents need to be taught how to manage the treatments to palliative care for children with terminal conditions. Twelve families have been able to have their child home and not hospitalized at the end of their lives in the last 2 years with the support of our staff.

Our patients are guaranteed a pediatric nurse 24 hrs/7days week which is unique to other home health agencies. We are averaging over 3,000 patients seen in the course of a year and have increased our referrals every month since we opened our door, justifying the need for our specialized services as the word of our agency grows.

We currently have 5 pediatric nurses on staff to see the increasing number of children referred to us. We work closely with many agencies throughout our service area, to provide seamless services to children with special medical needs on the central coast. We work together providing nursing and therapy to children referred from McStart, First 5 Monterey County and the Special needs project, Public Health Department and the several local school districts.

Coastal Kids offers 2 ways to provide therapy to children with development delays or congenital anomilies. Pre-term infants and children at high risk for infection or requiring continuous feeding or oxygen, are seen during home visits and exercise programs are developed and monitored by our pediatric therapist. Once children are medically stable, children are brought into our treatment rooms that are filled with toys and equipment to rapidly resolve delayed developmental milestones. These treatment rooms have allowed our therapist to see a greater number of children more frequently to better address the numerous children with therapy needs on the Central Coast. This is one of the only out patient therapy programs for pediatric patients that will accept Medi-Cal in the area.

The staff at Coastal Kids strive to improve the quality of life for any child and their family facing an illness of any kind. Through coordination with local physicians or specialty hospitals, our staff is able to bring children home from hospitals earlier, or minimize hospitalizations for treatments that we are able to provide in their own homes.

How you and your family can help:
There are so many ways that MBayKids's families can help Coastal Kids meet our goals. First and most importantly, help us spread the word of our services. If a family member, friend or neighbor has a child who is hospitalized or has a newly diagnosed medical condition, please tell them of our services. So our nurses may provide treatment, support and education to a family that is in crisis. We are also always looking for pediatric therapist and nurses to join our team. Our agency offers a wonderful flexible work environment for pediatric specialist. Again, we need help spreading the word to pediatric medical professionals relocating here that we are great alternative to working in a hospital.

Secondly, we have seen over 600 newborns since opening our doors. Many are born to families with very little resources. Handmade blankets or new clothes or blankets donated by children's organizations such as Girl Scouts, 4H, and youth groups are always wonderful to give out to our families.

These groups can also have fun making "gift baskets" for children throughout the year during holidays that we may give our patients going through treatment for cancer, cystic fibrosis or traumatic injuries. These children spend hours in treatment and resting, so a goody basket of games, books or handmade cards from local children would let them know they are being thought of.

High school students needing community service hours should contact our agency. We are always looking for help making charts, filing and helping with office tasks.

We have also just started to recycle used cell phones as a fund raiser for our agency and in an effort to "be green". We have a box to collect the phones in our lobby and will be placing more throughout Monterey County. Please call our main number for more information on the location of our collection boxes.

E-Mail: Margy@coastalkidshomecare.org