Evidence-Based Early Childhood Home Visiting Executive Summary - October 2018

Children develop fastest in their earliest years, and the skills and abilities they develop in those years help lay the foundation for their future success. Similarly, early negative experiences can contribute to poor social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes both in early childhood and in later life. Children growing up in poverty tend to be at greater risk of encountering adverse experiences that negatively affect their development. One service strategy that has improved these outcomes is early childhood home visiting, which provides information, resources, and support to expectant parents and families with young children, typically infants and toddlers, in their home environments.

A substantial literature has provided evidence of home visiting impacts on family functioning, parenting, and child outcomes. However, there are many gaps in knowledge about home visiting programs, including a lack of information on program implementation. Evaluations of home visiting have rarely collected detailed information on the services provided to families, so it is difficult to know whether impacts on particular outcomes of interest are associated with implementation or features of the home visiting model.

This implementation research report describes the local programs, home visiting staff, and families who participated in the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE), a national evaluation of the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program launched in 2011. This national evaluation is systematically examining how program features and implementation systems are associated with services delivered and impacts across four of the home visiting models designated as evidence-based by the U.S. Department of Health and HumanSer-vices: Early Head Start – Home-based option, Healthy Families America, Nurse-Family Partnership, and Parents as Teachers.

(click on the image to open the report as a PDF)
 

Click HERE (or click the image) to access the Home Visitor Statewide Progress Report

Home Visitors Program Supervisor

Rebecca Bibb
256-260-3172
rebecca.bibb@capna.org