The Power of Home Visiting

A child’s brain develops faster from birth to age five than at any other period in life, building the springboard for their future learning. Scientists once thought children were blank slates until their fifth birthday. We now know the early years lay a critical foundation for later health, education, and lifetime success. 

All parents want the very best for their children, yet many struggle to get them off to a strong start. It is a challenge to care for an infant in a household that has no access to a car, or where the closest medical care or job opportunity is two or three bus rides (or a two or three hour drive) away. Parents fighting their own depression or other health problems, or worrying about homelessness or putting food on the table, may also struggle with responding to a crying baby, a whining toddler, or a demanding preschooler.

These real-life challenges are the focus of  voluntary home visiting programs that help expectant mothers and parents* nurture development and navigate raising young children. 

Trained home visitors work with families in the home to help parents recognize and promote healthy growth and development. They develop trusted relationships with the families they work with, reinforcing positive parenting skills and connecting them to critical community resources such as child care, medical care, housing, and job training. In this way, home visiting can help ensure that parents, babies, and young children get what they need during this critical time, launching a trajectory to break the multi-generational cycle of  poverty. This white paper summarizes a sample of  recent research findings illustrating the power of  home visiting in generating these results.

Although evidence-based home visiting programs have been operating — and producing results — in communities in the U.S. for decades, in 2010, the passage of  the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) legislation provided the first federal funding to build a comprehensive state and Tribal-based system of  voluntary home visiting services that includes data collection and evaluation, research, and continuous quality improvement. 

This white paper highlights recent research findings from 33 peer-reviewed studies that can help home visiting practitioners, government policymakers, and others realize the full potential of  the MIECHV program

The studies describe evaluation results, published this decade, from a broad range of  evidence-based models, approaches, and geography. Foreach study, the paper provides context to explain the significance of  the issue examined, as well as brief  summaries of  selected findings, the study citation, and some basic information about the research methodology used. The paper also includes a summary chart to help readers identify the evaluations that are most relevant to their interests. 

With few exceptions, the evaluations included in this paper have been published in peer-reviewed journals, but they are not rated based on their methodological rigor. Intentionally, the summaries predominantly focus on studies that found positive outcomes and impacts, as well as some with mixed results. Positive findings help reaffirm what we are doing well, that could be replicated elsewhere, and paint a picture of  the successful practices being employed by programs throughout the country.