Home Visiting Programs for Child Well-Being

ABC - Infant targets several key issues that have been identified as problematic among children who have experienced early maltreatment and/or disruptions in care. These young children often behave in ways that push caregivers away. The first intervention component helps caregivers to re-interpret children's behavioral signals so that they provide nurturance even when it is not elicited. Nurturance does not come naturally to many caregivers, but children who have experienced early adversity especially need nurturing care. Thus, the intervention helps caregivers provide nurturing care even if it does not come naturally. Second, many children who have experienced early adversity are dysregulated behaviorally and biologically. The second intervention component helps caregivers provide a responsive, predictable, warm environment that enhances young children's behavioral and regulatory capabilities. The intervention helps caregivers follow their children's lead with delight. The third intervention component helps caregivers decrease behaviors that could be overwhelming or frightening to a young child.

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up - Early Childhood (ABC-EC), with a target population of caregivers of young children ages 2 through 4 who have experienced early adversity or are demonstrating socioemotional or behavioral concerns, is rated separately on this website.

HFA is a home visiting model designed to work with families, beginning prenatally or subsequent to birth, who have histories of trauma, intimate partner violence, mental health issues, substance use disorder and/or other life stressors. HFA services are offered voluntarily, intensively, and over the long-term. Additionally, and with National Office approval, HFA sites may voluntarily enroll families referred from Child Welfare/Children’s Protective Services with a child up to 24 months of age, offering services for a minimum of three years after enrollment.

HFA is theoretically rooted in the belief that early; nurturing relationships are the foundation for a healthy and productive life. Building upon attachment and bio-ecological systems theories, and the tenets of trauma-informed care, interactions between direct service providers and families are relationship-based; designed to promote positive parent-child relationships and secure attachment; services are strengths-based; family-centered; culturally responsive; and reflective.

As of August 2022, HFA is undergoing a rating review for the topic of Home Visiting Programs for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.

Nurse-Family Partnership® (NFP) is an intensive, strengths-based, trauma- and violence-informed community health program whose goals are to improve the health and lives of first-time moms and their children living in poverty. Specially trained registered nurses regularly visit first-time moms-to-be (adolescents and adults), starting early in pregnancy and continuing through children's second birthday. NFP nurses aim to leverage their clinical expertise in applying behavior change and human ecology theories to deliver this client-centered program. Ideally, NFP participants develop close relationships with their nurse. It is hoped that the nurse becomes a trusted resource for advice on everything from safely caring for their child to taking steps to provide a stable, secure future for their family. In addition to living in poverty, NFP moms also often are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, homelessness; addiction or substance misuse; involvement with child welfare or juvenile or criminal justice systems; intimate partner violence; severe developmental disabilities; behavioral or mental health needs; or a high-risk pregnancy.

AVANCE's philosophy is based on the premise that education must begin in the home and that the parent is the child's first and most important teacher. The PCEP fosters parenting knowledge and skills through a nine-month, intensive bilingual parenting curriculum that aims to have a direct impact on a young child's physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. Parents/primary caregivers are taught how to make toys out of common household materials and how to use them as tools to teach their children school readiness skills and concepts. Monthly home visits are also conducted to observe parent-child interactions and provide guidance in the home on learning through play. Along with the parenting education component, parents/primary caregivers are supported in meeting their personal growth, developmental and educational goals to foster economic stability. While parents/primary caregivers attend classes, their children under the age of three are provided with early childhood enrichment in a developmentally appropriate classroom setting which aims to build the academic, social, and physical foundation necessary for school readiness.

HIPPY is a home-based and parent-involved school readiness program that helps parents prepare their children ages three to five years old for success in school and beyond. The parent is provided with a set of carefully developed curriculum, books, and materials designed to strengthen their child's cognitive and early literacy skills, as well as their social, emotional, and physical development.

The HIPPY Curriculum contains 30 weekly activity packets, a set of storybooks, and a set of 20 manipulative shapes for each year. In addition to these basic materials, supplies such as scissors and crayons are provided for each participating family. The program uses trained coordinators and community-based home visitors who go into the home. These coordinators and home visitors role-play the activities with the parents and support each family throughout its participation in the program.

HIPPY believes that parents play a critical role in their children's education. The HIPPY program seeks to support parents who may not feel sufficiently confident to prepare their children for school, and is designed to remove barriers to participation in education.

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up – Early Childhood (ABC-EC), developed for children ages 2 through 4, targets several key issues that have been identified as problematic among children who have experienced adversity and/or demonstrate socioemotional or behavioral concerns. These young children often behave in ways that push caregivers away. The first intervention component is designed to help caregivers reinterpret children’s behavioral signals so that they provide nurturance even when it is not elicited. Nurturance does not come naturally to many caregivers, but children who have experienced adversity especially need nurturing care. Thus, the intervention aims to help caregivers provide nurturing care even if it does not come naturally. Second, many children who have experienced adversity are dysregulated behaviorally and biologically. The second intervention component is designed to help caregivers provide a responsive, predictable, warm environment that enhances young children’s behavioral and regulatory capabilities. The intervention aims to help caregivers follow their children’s lead with delight. The third intervention component is designed to help caregivers implement calming strategies and be present psychologically and physically when their child is dysregulated.

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up – Infant (ABC-I) is rated separately on this website.

Boys Town In-Home Family Services (BT-IHFS) is an in-home parent skills-based service for parents/caregivers with children at-risk for involvement in the child welfare system or out-of-home placement. The program includes family engagement, assessment, service planning, parent and life skills training using an adapted version of Common Sense Parenting®, assisting with resources and supports, and case closure planning. BT-IHFS was developed to serve families with high caregiver strain, ineffective parenting strategies, difficulty accessing formal and informal supports, and children with significant emotional and behavioral needs. The BT-IHFS program has a hypothesized theory of change that starts with the provision of individualized, needs-driven services to families with a focus on building strong relationships through quick engagement interactions. The primary method is to provide coaching on parenting skills and connect the family to needed community resources or supports.

Early Head Start (EHS) is a federally funded early childhood development program aimed at low-income families. Children and families enrolled in center-based programs receive comprehensive child development services in a center-based setting, supplemented with home visits by the child's teacher and other EHS staff. In home-based settings, children and their families are supported through weekly home visits and bi-monthly group socialization experiences. EHS also serves children through locally designed family child care options, in which certified child care providers care for children in their homes. Services include: early education both in and out of the home; parenting education; comprehensive health and mental health services for mothers and children; nutrition education; and family support services.

ESSS provides parent education and support, home visiting and pre-literacy and language development services for families in rural, geographically isolated communities. ESSS is a model designed to be culturally relevant and provide early childhood education services to pregnant women and children from birth to age five, education services to parents, and ongoing staff training to community early childhood educators. It not only recognizes the essential role families have in preparing their children for school, but also reinforces parents' roles as advocates in raising awareness for community-wide efforts that support school readiness. It does this through community collaboration and by creating strong connections between parents and the schools their children will attend.

The Families First program utilizes the Risk, Need, and Responsivity Model for intervention with at-risk youth and families through 3-4 home visits per week totaling 6-10 hours per week, typically lasting 10-12 weeks. Individual responsivity factors are assessed so the worker can tailor the intervention to the youth and family. While the youth's specific risk factors are targeted, the risk factors related to the home environment (e.g., parental relationships, supervision, structure, discipline, etc.) and the social environment (e.g., peer associations, community involvement, relationships, etc.) are also targeted.

The specific implementation of the Families First program is carried out using a 6-phase model within the framework of the Teaching-Family Model. This treatment approach began in the 1960s at the University of Kansas. Its basis is in cognitive behavioral approaches, social learning theory, modeling, and a strength-based emphasis on actively teaching and role-playing skills that promote positive client and family outcomes.

Family Spirit® is a culturally tailored home-visiting program designed to promote optimal health and well-being for parents and their children. Family Spirit combines the use of paraprofessionals from the community as home visitors and a culturally informed, strengths-based curriculum as a core strategy to support young families. Parents are given information and taught skills designed to promote healthy development and positive lifestyles for themselves and their children. Family Spirit consists of 63 lessons taught from pregnancy to age 3.

Family Spirit's vision: To break intergenerational cycles of despair in historically disenfranchised communities by empowering a local workforce as change agents for promoting the best start for young families.

Family Spirit's mission: Family Spirit envisions a future where every community, regardless of socioeconomic status, will have access to an evidence-based, culturally competent early childhood home-visiting model that employs local paraprofessionals to promote optimal health and well-being for parents and young children in their communities.

Healthy & Safe. An Australian Parent Education Kit is a home-based education resource tailored to the unique learning needs of parents with learning difficulties. It is designed to equip these parents who have young children with the knowledge and skills necessary for managing home dangers, accidents, and childhood illness.

Healthy & Safe was adapted from the UCLA Parent-Child Health and Wellness Program developed by Alexander Tymchuk (Tymchuk, A. J. (2006). The health & wellness program: A parenting curriculum for families at risk. Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company) and has been widely disseminated as a part of the Australian national strategy Healthy Start. Healthy Start is a national capacity building strategy which aims to improve health and well-being outcomes for children whose parents have learning difficulties (www.healthystart.net.au).

The Healthy & Safe kit provides lesson plans, modules, and parent workbooks covering 6 health and 13 home safety topics including recognizing when your child is sick, calling the doctor, using medicines safely, identifying dangerous objects in the home, and developing a home safety plan.

ParentChild+, an early childhood program, is designed to promote parent-child interaction and positive parenting to enhance children's cognitive and social-emotional development. The program specifically works with families who live in historically marginalized communities that consistently experience housing and food insecurity and low-quality education and health care services. These families are often isolated and speak home languages other than English. The program focuses on partnering with these families to prepare their children for academic success through regular, frequent home visiting. Twice weekly home visits are designed to strengthen parent-child interaction, the conversation, reading, and play that are critical to early childhood development and well-being. Each week, early learning specialists (ELSs; i.e., home visitors) bring a new book or educational toy that remains with the families permanently. Using the book or toy, the ELSs engages with the parents and children together in reading, conversation, and play activities that are designed to stimulate quality interaction, support age-appropriate developmental expectations, enhance language and learning at home, and support parents in their role as their child’s first and most important teacher.

Parents as Teachers™ is a home visiting model that promotes the optimal early development, learning, and health of children by supporting and engaging their parents and caregivers. The home visiting model can be offered prenatally through kindergarten and can be replicated by various types of organizations including health departments, nonprofit organizations, hospitals, and school districts.

The Parents as Teachers model offers a cohesive package of services for families with young children and is framed around four dynamic components: Personal Visits, Group Connections, Child Screenings, and Resource Network. These components are guided by explicit fidelity and quality standards that guide program service delivery and replication of the program.

Parents as Teachers home visiting professionals meet families where they are comfortable; each personal visit includes a focus on parent-child interaction, development-centered parenting, and family well-being.

The PALS I curriculum was developed to facilitate parents' mastery of specific skills for interacting with their young children including paying attention to and correctly interpreting babies' signals, responding contingently to signals, and using rich language. It is designed as a preventive intervention program to strengthen the bond between parent and baby and to stimulate early language, cognitive, and social development. There is also a Play and Learning Strategies - Toddler/Preschool Program (PALS-II) which is rated in the Home Visiting for Child Well-Being topic area as well.

The PALS II curriculum was developed to facilitate parents' mastery of specific skills for interacting with their young children, such as understand children's signals, responding contingently, guiding children's behavior, and using rich language. It is designed as a preventive intervention program to strengthen the bond between parent and child and to stimulate early language, cognitive, and social development via positive language input, use of language and activities to encourage children's problem solving skills, and positive discipline strategies. There is also a Play and Learning Strategies - Infant Program (PALS I) which is rated in the Home Visiting for Child Well-Being topic area as well.

SafeCare® is an in-home parent training program that targets risk factors for child neglect and physical abuse in which parents are taught skills in three module areas: (1) how to interact in a positive manner with their children, to plan activities, and respond appropriately to challenging child behaviors, (2) to recognize hazards in the home in order to improve the home environment, and (3) to recognize and respond to symptoms of illness and injury, in addition to keeping good health records. All three modules should be used in the implementation of SafeCare®; any modifications to or elimination of modules need to be discussed with the program developers.