Home Visiting Evaluated

A Child Trends fact sheet, What Works in Home Visiting Programs: Lessons from Experimental Evaluations of Programs and Interventions, examines the impact of various home visiting programs on a wide range of outcomes. Child Trends evaluated 66 different home visiting programs and categorized their findings as: not proven to work, mixed findings, and found to work. The fact sheet includes a matrix that provides detailed assessments of the program approaches based on their impact on 10 established outcomes.

Not all home visiting programs are the same, while they might share some common elements, such as providing families with social supports and connecting families to community services, they also have different target populations, provide different levels of service, and vary in visit frequency. With new policy, programs, and funding directed toward home-visiting it is important to establish what models have been developed, and how effective they’ve been in serving children and their families.

When implementing a new program or policy, reviewing the research and data on what has been successful and under what circumstances, enables policymakers to best serve their constituents specific needs.

For a framework for policy success.