Baby Bayou, a new exhibit at the Northeast Louisiana Children’s Museum, is the “perfect place” for a child’s brain to grow, said Amy Clancy, Director of Child Care Connections at the Children’s Coalition for Northeast Louisiana.
Clancy joined several community leaders, including Monroe Mayor Jamie Mayo, in celebrating today’s grand opening of Baby Bayou.
“We knew that learning starts at birth and that we needed a space for infants and toddlers. At the core of early learning is adult and child interaction. Baby Bayou is designed to facilitate those quality interactions between parents or grandparents and their infant or toddler,” she said. “When we talk, when we read, when we play with infants and toddlers, we are forming the wiring in their brains and building those neural connections for future learning.”

A collaborative coalition targeting underage drinking and the non-medical use of prescription pills in Union Parish is increasing a primary focus — prevention and solution — with mobile prescription take back boxes and a permanent box at the sheriff's office.
LaTonya Owens, Regional Prevention Coordinator, NE Delta HSA, said the new collection locations will allow people to turn in unused or expired prescription medication, no questions asked. She said the mobile units will be deployed to locations throughout northeast Louisiana on Oct. 22, the national prescription take back day.

The Union Parish Alliance for Community Transformation Coalition, or U-ACT, partnered with the Children's Coalition of Northeast Louisiana, the ULM School of Pharmacy, Brookshire's, Generation Rx, the UPSO and Cardinal Health to launch the collection boxes.
"We (U-ACT) have two things we focus on primarily, which is reducing the instances of underage drinking and the non-medical use of prescription drugs," Mary Barrios, U-ACT project coordinator, said. "We focus on those two areas, and we did that by developing an action plan."
She said many of the coalition's programs are directly related to the schools, such as a student ambassador program at Union Parish High School.
"We not only tell kids you shouldn't do drugs, you shouldn't drink...it's about talking to kids about making positive choices and giving them the opportunity to do that," Barrios said. "With student ambassadors, we try to bring them to new opportunities and things they might not try otherwise."
U-ACT's coalition is managed by the Northeast Delta Human Services Authority and similar initiatives may role out to other communities in northeast Louisiana based on need according to executive director Dr. Monteic Sizer.
"It is a pilot program for us," Sizer said. "Union Parish was selected primarily due to a significant amount of teens using prescriptions and other illicit substances. Our plan was to see how we could engage communities in that area to help us help those young people not use illicit and/or illegal substances, and we are making a significant difference already in that area. We will certainly also expand to other areas where the need is also great."
As part of the partnership, the coalition has worked with faith-based institutions, the hospital, the district attorney's office and local judges, he said.
Barrios also said the community has been extremely open to partnerships and numerous events are on the horizon, including a youth summit and "social norming" campaigns to help teens understand misperceptions around underage drinking.
"There are so many things a collective group of like-minded people can do with the resources that we have," Barrios said. "I think what we've found is that our partners have resources, and they may not know what to do with them. We've been able to braid a lot of things together and bring people to the table, and that has really led to a lot of success for us."