Family Care Center (Tipat Halav), Pleased to Meet You
The exciting moment has arrived, and your infant has been born. In that moment, life changed. There will be questions about caring for infants at home – how to feed, bathe, diaper and dress them, how to calm a crying baby, how to keep them safe? These questions are only natural. The Family Care Center’s role is to help you provide your child with the best possible start. The staff will accompany you, listen to you, answer any questions and provide professional and reliable information during every stage of this journey, from birth to 6 years of age.
The Family Care Center staff
The Family Care Center staff includes nurses and physicians who have been specially trained in public health. During all encounters, a Family Care Center nurse will accompany you. In several of the meetings, the physician will perform medical examinations. Some Family Care Centers offer professional assistance in other areas, such as nutrition.
Services offered at Family Care Centers
- Education and guidance: the Family Care Center staff educates and guides families from pregnancy planning to preparing for childbirth and raising children from birth to the age of six.
- Vaccination: the Family Care Center administers vaccines according to the immunization schedule for infants and children to prevent the contraction of infectious diseases, some of which are life-threatening.
- Monitoring growth and development: during Family Care Center appointments, the staff measures the child’s growth and development, performs routine tests, medical examinations and vision tests to make sure that all indices are satisfactory. If necessary, the nurses will refer you to a consultant and for other tests.
- Healthy lifestyle: to raise healthy children, the Family Care Center staff will educate you on developing a healthy lifestyle in terms of breastfeeding, nutrition, safety, hygiene, dental health, development, and so on in an according to the child's age.
- Counseling: the Family Care Centers provide counseling to parents (and future parents) on a range of topics related to parenting, such as breastfeeding, sleep and diet.
Receiving services at Family Care Centers
Family Care Centers are located across the country. The services are provided by the Ministry of Health, HMOs, the Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv Yafo Municipalities. The service is provided at all centers free of charge.
- The Ministry of Health Family Care Centers: provide service to everyone, regardless of the HMO (including foreign workers and status-less women who give birth in Israel).
- Family Care Centers of the Tel Aviv - Yafo and Jerusalem Municipalities: provide service to their residents, regardless of HMO membership.
- Family Care Centers of the HMOs: provide service primarily to their insured members.
Scheduling an appointment: following the birth of your child, you should locate the Family Care Center nearest to your place of residence and schedule the first appointment.
Find the closest Family Care Center to your home (Hebrew)
Schedule an appointment (Hebrew)
The first appointment at the Family Care Center
Here is what we will do during the first appointment at the Family Care Center:
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1Discussion after childbirth
The nurse will be happy to hear from you how you are doing and will explain about the postpartum period.
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2Physical assessment
A review of the discharge letter from the hospital and an examination of your infant’s systems for symmetry, to rule out any concern of jaundice, rash or significant weight loss, and so on.
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3Monitoring growth
Weight, length (height) and circumference of the infant’s head will be measured as part of the monitoring of growth.
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4Guidance
The nurse will answer your questions and will instruct you in areas related to care of infants during their first stages of life. The appointment at the Family Care Center is an excellent opportunity to get advice. Come with your questions about anything that you believe is important to know.
Prepare a file for the Family Care Center appointment
You should know that the first appointment at the Family Care Center takes about one hour and occasionally even more. It is therefore important to prepare any equipment that you will need in advance (the other appointments generally last about half an hour).
This is what you should bring to the Family Care Center appointments:
- Cloth diaper (to place on the infant during the examination).
- Diapers and additional set of clothes.
- Infant formula and bottles (if the mother does not breastfeed).
- Vaccine booklet.
- During the first appointment – bring the medical documents you received following the birth.
Hotline – Kol Habriut *5400
Questions sometimes arise after the Family Care Center’s operating hours, such as “Whey would he not stop crying?”, “She has been sleeping for 5 hours, is that normal?”. In these cases, you can contact the nurses hotline at Kol Habriut (*5400), which is staffed by Family Care Center nurses, breastfeeding consultants, sleep consultants and a specialist pediatric dietician, who can answer questions in areas covered by the Family Care Center: questions about breastfeeding, coping with crying, side effects following vaccination, nutrition, sleep difficulties, development, and so on.
The hotline also offers service to families who are in a surrogacy process and seek help before or after the birth on any matter related to infant care. When calling from overseas, call 972-8-6241010.
The service is provided free of charge to parents of children from birth to 6 years of age at any Family Care Center:
Families treated at the Ministry of Health’s Family Care Centers
Will receive a response based on information in the medical file once identification has been completed. A mother will be given personal recommendations, which will be documented in the infant’s medical record to enable continued monitoring and treatment at your Family Care Center.
Families treated at the Family Care Centers of the HMOs
Will receive a response based on Ministry of Health recommendations and guidelines, as nurses on the hotline are unable to view the infant’s medical file.
Call *5400, select the regular hotline and then extension 9.
Families who are overseas (such as those in a surrogacy process) who have questions about or after childbirth on any topic pertaining to infant care can call 972-8-6241010 from overseas.