Bloomington birth center Tandem expands services with transportation van

Tandem Community Birth Center & Postpartum House has a new outreach vehicle called the TanGo. The van will be used to help transport families to and from Tandem to use the services, to and from different community events and transport postpartum doulas to clients’ houses.

Tandem serves Monroe, Morgan, Lawrence, Owen, Jackson, Brown and Greene counties. People in all of these counties will have access to the van if needed.

The Early Learning Indiana Early Years Initiative Grant funded the vehicle, along with allowing Tandem to renovate part of their building to offer overnight stays, expand postpartum house services, pilot the transportation program and expand their outreach work. The grant was for $500,000 and will be funding those programs through August 2026.

Julie Duhon, executive director and cofounder of Tandem, said the van seats seven people and she is excited to start customizing it.

“We just got confirmation from CareSource, that they were going to fund our car seats, and we’ll be able to deck it out,” Duhon said. “We would be able to take a couple adults and a lot of kids or a bunch of adults and a couple kids.”

Duhon said many of the people who use Tandem resources have difficulties getting there because of transportation. Tandem is located at 2613 E. Third St. in Bloomington.

“This is very much a pilot, we want to see how it evolves and how we can best meet the needs of different communities within our whole region,” Duhon said. “We’ve had families call from nearby in Bloomington and maybe it's a mom saying ‘I’m home with six kids and I don’t have reliable transportation and I really need access to stuff from your free room’ and we say we’ll deliver it.”

Duhon said within days of getting the vehicle Tandem had a call from someone in Bloomfield wondering if they could shop in the free room and asking if Tandem could deliver.

“We said we totally could so to be able to say that, people are completely shocked that we can and will,” Duhon said. “We had someone who drove in from out of county and they weren’t sure when they would be able to get back here and we said not to worry about it and give us a call, we’ll get it to you if you can’t get here.”

One of the services the vehicle will provide is postpartum doulas visiting client’s homes. The doulas come into a new parent's home after the birth of a baby and help with chores such as washing dishes, laundry, or holding the baby while a parent showers or sleeps. Doulas can also just be someone to talk to.

Not only is the vehicle something that can help the families with things they need, but it can be used to give families access to things they might not be able to afford or otherwise obtain. Duhon said Tandem got passes to Wonderlab for a discounted rate. They will give free passes to families and help them enroll to get an access pass or a first-time parent membership so they’re ready for future visits.

“If you’re talking about really breaking down inequities and enriching kids’ lives and saying ‘it's not enough to survive’ these children should have access to all of the opportunities whether it's storytime at the library, Wonderlab, the county fair or roller skating at Western Skateland,” Duhon said. “We need to not just help provide people with access to transportation, but we also have to provide them with access to someone who can help them.”

Tandem is still tweaking the operational hours for the vehicle, but for the most part the postpartum doulas will be the drivers with some of them working overnight shifts, so Tandem anticipates it will offer a wide range of hours.

Yvonne Hensley, access, collaboration and equity director at Tandem, said she is working with the schedules of the doulas and their bookings to make sure to keep the nights open for families who have newborns.

“Some parents kind of need that extra help getting to places at night so I’ve also been looking at if people need to get to our postpartum room when it opens and/or getting back to the hospital if need be,” Hensley said.

Tandem will be tracking community event calendars to see what they can do to accommodate families around higher need times.

“I’ve been looking at the summertime because things are going to happen at nighttime,” Hensley said. “On our booking there are special days that you can do night time stuff and there are different days that offer special events.”

Duhon said Tandem employees are going to be learning as they go and things will change over the next few weeks and months as they see what works and what doesn’t.

“We are really excited to bring it to the community,” Duhon said. “I think that this is a gap that is so rarely filled so I’m really excited to see this unfold.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Bloomington's Tandem offers doulas on the go to new parents