While her daughter naps, Bridget Collins spends an hour reviewing and role-playing activities with her home visitor, Amanda Pedlar, in the front room of her home in San Antonio, Texas.
This week, the couple begins by talking about 3-year-old Brook's growing curiosity. Pedlar notes that it is normal, at this stage of development, for Brook to ask “Why?” Often, she wants to try new things and explore her surroundings. She then gives Collins some suggestions to encourage her daughter's curiosity.
Together, they work through an activity pack that covers topics such as language and motor skills. Collins will present these same activities to Brook in the coming days.
When Pedlar and Collins role-play a “tasting party” (surrounded by dolls and stuffed toys, in the spirit of a tea party) and try to distinguish between sweet and crunchy foods, Collins leans into her personality. daughter, simulating the 3-year-old's tendency to zone out, fool around, and intervene with a defiant “no!”
It allows Pedlar the opportunity to model different reactions.
“It really helps to see her respond the way I should respond,” says Collins, who notes that she used to say “no” to her children a lot, but now sees many other ways to respond, such as redirection.
Week after week, activities help strengthen the bond between parents and children. Collins also says he has boosted her confidence.
Children learn from their parents and caregivers from birth. But what they are learning and how they are learning it varies widely. By connecting families with trained educators, home visiting programs give parents the opportunity to learn high-quality, developmentally appropriate activities to do with their children and ask questions about their children's needs and progress.
This year, EdSurge has been reporting on evidence-based voluntary home visiting services and the difference they can make for children and families in the United States.
In one story, we examine how a home visiting program, Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Children (HIPPY), supports immigrant families and connects them to their communities. In another, we look at how two long-standing home visiting programs have adapted their models to serve home-based child care providers.
Over the past five months, we have observed home visiting in two different states, attended home visitor training, and spoken with over 30 people to understand the home visiting landscape in this country and see how these services support child development. , improve school readiness, empower families, and promote safe and healthy home learning environments.
Here are five key takeaways from our reports:
1. Home visits do more than empower parents to be their children's first and best teachers.
Home visits provide parents and caregivers with invaluable lessons and insights about their children's learning and development. This can lead parents to become more confident teachers and more vocal advocates for their children. But the role of a home visitor goes beyond that.
“It's almost equally about helping our families find the right resources to improve their lives and improve maternal mental health,” says Pedlar, the home visitor in San Antonio. “Things as simple as helping a family find a food resource and taking that burden off their shoulders can be really helpful.”
Home visitors provide products such as diapers and wipes. They can connect families to resources like food pantries, domestic violence prevention, and early childhood intervention. And they often alert parents to family events in the community, such as days off at the zoo.
Many home visiting programs also offer regular group meetings to convene participating families. For families new to this country, such gatherings can provide a unique opportunity to meet others who come from your home country or speak your native language.
“At the end of the day, when you really deconstruct home visiting, it's about relationships,” says Mimi Aledo-Sandoval, senior policy director at Alliance for Early Success, a nonprofit that works with early childhood advocates. in all 50 states.
2. Home visiting programs can be beneficial for all families, but for now their scope is limited.
More than 17 million families across the country, including 23 million children, be to benefit of voluntary, evidence-based home visiting services, according to the National Home Visiting Resource Center. That is, all pregnant women and families with a child under 6 years old have something to gain from these regular home services.
“Being a father is difficult. Being a new father is difficult. I think that's true regardless of socioeconomic status, regardless of where you live. It's a life-changing event,” says Dr. Michael Warren, associate administrator of the Office of Maternal and Child Health at the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. . (HHS). “That's why it's helpful to be able to get resources and assistance when you need it. Home visits can help fill those gaps.”
While home visiting has been shown to produce positive outcomes for children and families, only some have access to these programs due to lack of funding. In 2022, only about 270,000 families (about 1.6 percent of those eligible) received home visiting services.
With limited funding, many communities implement home visiting programs for specific populations, such as low-income families, single-parent households, recent immigrant and refugee families, homeless families, and those with a history of substance abuse.
3. The US government invests in home visiting programs and funding is expected to expand.
Many home visiting programs have been around for decades. Historically, they had received state and local funding, as well as money from private foundations, says Sarah Crowne, senior research scientist at Child Trends, a nonprofit research center focused on children and families.
Then, in 2010, the federal government invested in home visiting programs for the first time with the creation of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MIECHV) “It was a sea change for the states,” Crowne says.
To access these federal funds, states must work with one of 24 home visiting programs that have met HHS criteria for evidence of effectiveness.
“It's very rigorous,” adds Crowne. “It's not just a matter of any program being able to get these funds.”
Before Congress reauthorized the MIECHV in 2022, the program received funding of $400 million a year. Now, under a new funding formula, that allocation will double to $800 million annually by 2027. this yearThe federal government will match $3 for every $1 in non-federal funds spent on home visiting programs, up to a certain amount.
“It really opens that door wide for (states) and allows them to expand into communities where they know there is a need but to date they haven't been able to serve those communities,” says Warren, whose department oversees MIECHV.
“It's really exciting,” he adds. “There hasn't been an opportunity like this in the recent past to be able to do this type of expansion of home visiting services.”
4. Home visits do not replace early childhood education, but they can help establish a solid foundation.
In a world where all families have access to high-quality early childhood education for their children, home visits would be complementary support.
“In some countries, that's what happens,” says Miriam Westheimer, program director at HIPPY International. “In this country, with very limited resources, that is rare.” Most often in the United States, children attend an early childhood program or families receive home visits, she says. “It shouldn't be one or the other,” adds Westheimer. “It often is.”
No one is arguing that home visits should be a child's only outside learning experience before school, but rather with early care and education. Inaccessible and unavailable For many families, that may be their only option.
In those cases, investigation has shown that home visits can give children a solid foundation to build on when they start school. Home visits help them learn social-emotional skills, early literacy skills, and fine motor development, such as holding a pencil and using scissors.
5. The impact of home visiting is expanding by serving home-based child care providers.
Traditionally, home visits have been made to parents and primary caregivers. But in recent years, several home visiting programs, including HIPPY, ParentChild+, and Parents as Teachers, have seen an opportunity to expand their reach by serving home-based child care providers.
The model has proven successful and many programs are seeking to increase their presence among child care providers, including unlicensed “family, friends, and neighbors” (FFN) providers, who are typically excluded from training and education programs.
A number of counties and states They are finding ways to use public funds to implement this model.
Because many home child care providers care for multiple children and have strong relationships with the families they serve, many policymakers consider them well positioned to translate the experience they gain from home visits into positive outcomes for children. children.
