Empowering pregnant women, children, and families through evidence-based home visiting services.
The Home Visiting program helps parents and caregivers raise children who are physically, socially, and emotionally healthy and ready to learn. Expectant parents and parents of young children are paired with a designated home visitor; typically a trained nurse, social worker, or other early childhood professional.
- Home visitors regularly meet with families in their homes or another location of their choice and provide knowledge and skills to support the health and well-being of their young children, ensuring a great start to life.
- Home visitors get to know each family over time and tailor services to meet their needs
- Home visits last about an hour and are provided weekly, biweekly, or monthly based on each family's needs and preferences
Home Visiting Goals
- Improve the health of pregnant women, parents and caregivers, and children
- Promote child development and school readiness
- Encourage positive, development-centered parenting
- Improve families' economic self-sufficiency
The first three years of life are a period of incredible growth in all areas of a child's development. Children's early experiences and interactions with adults shape brain development and serve as the foundation for further learning. Home visiting empowers parents and caregivers to meet their family's needs and to engage more fully in their children's care and growth. Research shows that home visiting improves children's school readiness, and prevents child abuse and neglect.
Where you live will determine which type of home visiting program is available.
Parents as Teachers (PAT)
This is a free, voluntary home-visiting program for families, which provides parenting education to encourage development-centered parenting and enhance family well-being.
Home visitors provide one-on-one support to women during pregnancy and parents/guardians during the critical early years of child development, ages 0-5 years old.
What can a Home Visitor do for me?
- Help my family develop and achieve our goals
- Increase my knowledge of early childhood development and enhance my parenting practices
- Provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues
- Increase my children's school readiness and school success
Enrollment & Service Length for Home Visitors
Families may enroll at any point, from pregnancy until the child is 5 years old. Home visitors offer 12-24 home visits annually depending on the needs of the family. Families are served for at least two years between pregnancy and kindergarten and can continually enroll children as their family grows.
Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP)
This is a free, voluntary home visiting program for first-time moms. Home visitors use input from parents, nursing experience, and clinical practice coupled with motivational interviewing to promote personal growth and prenatal health for mothers, healthy development for children, and economic self-sufficiency for families.
Home visitors meet with low-income, first-time moms, beginning during pregnancy to provide one-on-one support until the child turns 2 years old.
What can a Home Visitor do for me?
- Help my family develop and achieve our goals
- Improve maternal and prenatal health and outcomes
- Improve my child's health and development
- Improve my family's economic self-sufficiency
Enrollment & Service Length for Home visitors
Because Nurse-Family Partnership focuses on first-time moms, women must enroll during pregnancy and receive a home visit by their 29th week of pregnancy. Home visitors offer weekly home visits for the first month of enrollment, every other week until the baby is born, weekly for the first six weeks after birth, every other week until the baby is 20 months old, and monthly until the child is 2 years old.