Meeting Families Where They Are: Strategies for Home Visiting
By Lindsay Knepp, Family Partnership Manager at Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning
For those of us who work in early childhood education, the practice of home visiting has emerged as a cornerstone for enabling a truly ‘whole child’ approach for young children. After more than 13 years as a school social worker in K-12, and now in my role as Family Partnership Manager at Catherine Hershey Schools for Early Learning (CHS), I am a passionate believer that home visiting in early childhood is instrumental in bridging the gap between educational settings and the family home, laying a strong foundation for lifelong learning and well-being.
By working with children in their home settings, professionals can detect delays in child development, health issues or social-emotional challenges within the family that might not be evident in a more formal educational context.
Of course, many organizations include an element of home visiting in their program. But it risks becoming little more than a check box activity if professionals are not given the support, training, and guidance needed to make it a truly meaningful experience. (To address that need, I was recently invited to explain the CHS approach to home visiting for participants at the 2024 PACCA Early Childhood Education Summit).
By taking a strategic approach to maximizing that impact, it’s a (relatively) low-cost, high-impact way to meet the individual needs of children and families to support healthy development and builds a framework in which everyone can thrive.
A Wrap Around Approach
When the home visitor adds activities that support one-on-one interaction with the family, it builds a relationship that, in turn, builds success. Parents are a child’s first and most influential teachers, and by providing them with the tools and knowledge to support their child’s development, home visitors foster a nurturing and stimulating home environment. This, in turn, promotes positive family-child interactions, which are crucial for cognitive, social, and emotional growth.
Home visiting also creates an opportunity to provide supports for family growth and skill building. And importantly, by fostering a sense of safety before, during and after the home visit, it can create an ongoing, trusted relationship.
Fostering this sense of safety can be done through:
- Outreach to the family prior to the visit to explain what will happen, ask about pets in the home, and understand who lives in the home.
- Open dialogue with families to make the home visit a collaborative experience.
- Taking time during the visit to share about the importance of play and interactions for both children and family.
An effective home-visiting strategy that supports growth, not just of the children, but of the whole family, takes a three-pronged approach:
Supporting the Family System– Assessing family needs, referrals to community partners, and engaging in ways to build economic stability.
Safety Education– Giving car seat information, home safety facts, information on shaken baby syndrome, and helping with strategies to manage stress in the home.
Educating and Supporting Families–Building knowledge about key developmental stages, the importance of play, child health needs, and strategies for managing behavior.
The Importance of Play
One of the most rewarding and impactful elements is working with families to help them build their understanding of the importance of play in child development. Play is essential to the social, emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being of children, and is so important to optimal child development that it has been recognized by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights as a right of every child.
Play is mutually beneficial for both children and families. However, despite growing awareness of the need to prioritize play, there are barriers at home and at school. Notably, time for child-driven play has declined, particularly in school settings. Some schools are under pressure to reduce recess and creative activities, in favor of ‘academic’ subjects.
In home settings, families face pressure to provide structured enrichment activities, reducing downtime for free play. And families with children in poverty often face socioeconomic obstacles that impede their rights to have playtime, for example, they may live in neighborhoods which lack resources, such as community centers, parks, and playgrounds that offer safe places for children to play together. On the other hand, children who are ‘highly scheduled’, with too many structured activities, can potentially experience emotional distress and anxiety.
Play is a natural tool to build self-esteem and resilience in children as they learn social skills such as sharing to overcome challenges, negotiation with others, and conflict resolution. It facilitates learning about the world, promoting creativity, imagination, dexterity, and emotional strength.
For adults within the family, play offers an opportunity to strengthen family-child bonds by ring-fencing time for families to be fully engaged and connected with their children, and to see the world from their child’s perspective. Play strengthens familial relationships through consistent, loving interactions. There are also significant health benefits, as play releases oxytocin, which promotes trust and relationship-building, while reducing familial stress, lowering blood pressure and alleviating anxiety.
Warm Handoffs and Strong Referrals
Not all family and child needs can be addressed personally by the professional conducting the home visit. As part of the ongoing support offered, it’s crucial for home visitors to continually assess everyone’s evolving needs, so that they can refer and connect families with essential services and resources in the community.
However, it’s not enough to just make appointments or ask families to get in touch with providers on their own. Having built up the relationship within the family, the home visitor should ensure that there are “warm handoffs and strong referrals” to transfer care between service providers (sometimes in the presence of the person being helped).
This personal approach can help to address communication issues, allow people to clarify or correct the information exchanged and can ensure people’s trust in their continuing care and support as they build their relationship with the new provider.
Why do I believe so passionately in home visiting? Early childhood home visiting improves a wide range of outcomes including mental health, child health and development, prevention of child abuse and neglect, and family economic stability. That’s why at CHS our Family Success Advocates have quarterly home visits with families built into our program.
It’s a unique and impactful way for early education professionals to build respectful, reciprocal partnerships with families in young children’s development and learning. And through this collaboration and engagement, to provide scaffolds to make learning achievable within the family’s context and community.
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