Home Visiting Can Help Young Children Gain Developmental Ground

The increasing amount of research into early childhood education suggests that this period of life is vital to development, as children up to age five rapidly accumulate fundamental capabilities on which subsequent development is based. This, in turn, makes parents and caregivers the best resource children have for starting off on the right path. According to a policy brief from the National Human Services Assembly, home visiting has emerged as a core strategy for enhancing the skills of caregivers and also linking higher risk families to community resources. Home visiting is an early childhood intervention strategy that aims to support caregivers by bringing services directly to them at home and research has demonstrated that this strategy can improve a focused set of outcomes (development and reductions in the potential for abuse, for example). Another important aspect of home visiting is that the services are often paired with center-based childhood education, which achieves better outcomes than interventions targeted at caregivers or children alone. To ensure higher risk children enter kindergarten at the same level as their more advantaged peers, it is worth looking into home visiting interventions.

To view the policy brief, click here.