Home Visiting

Home-visiting programs are an important component of early childhood systems development efforts. Program goals vary across home-visiting programs, but most deal with issues such as health care, education, and development. Models such as the Nurse-Family Partnership have demonstrated the long-term positive benefits of such programs. Working directly with families and caregivers in natural environments, these home-visiting programs are able to offer the support and guidance families need. Many states have developed extensive home visitation efforts.

Home visiting in Project LAUNCH

As with most Project LAUNCH interventions, each Project LAUNCH community has adopted an approach to home visiting that meets its community needs and complements existing services. For example, Maine’s Project LAUNCH program provides home-visiting services in coordination with the state’s universal home-visiting program for first-time families. It uses the Brazelton Touchpoints model to enhance parent competence and strengthen the parent-child relationship. Some states use an evidence-based home-visiting curricula such as one developed by Parents as Teachers, while others use a locally-developed model. For the most part, Project LAUNCH home-visiting programs support parents of infants and toddlers.

To ensure the sustainability of Project LAUNCH home-visiting efforts into the future, Project LAUNCH programs are:

• Exploring ways to maximize the reach of home-visiting programs by coordinating with programs that include Early Head Start, Part C Early Intervention, and newer models, including an ACF-sponsored grant program to prevent child maltreatment
• Looking to emphasize social and emotional development as an important area of focus in the community’s other home-visiting programs by offering training and/or developing common outcomes for the initiatives
• Assessing the effectiveness of their own model program for the community population