Why should healthcare providers make home visiting referrals?

Virginia’s early childhood home visiting programs consistently demonstrate strong results with improvements in birth outcomes, maternal and child health, family functioning, and positive parenting behaviors. Visit EIV’s  program directory and program eligibility pages to determine which home visiting program is right for your patient.

The following materials outline the strategy, science and training needed to make a case for home visiting:

The Strategy

Through regular home visits, trained professional home visitors provide parenting and education support designed to:

  • Improve pregnancy outcomes for high-risk women and babies
  • Improve children’s health and development
  • Strengthen family functioning

Home visitors can complement the care you provide by:

  • Assisting women with keeping health care appointments
  • Making referrals to needed health and social services
  • Providing information on healthy nutrition
  • Encouraging initiation of breastfeeding
  • Providing information on child health and development
  • Promoting positive parent-child relationships

Please click here for a Quick Reference program eligibility guide.

The Science

As a provider, there are many benefits to partnering with a local home visiting program to support the needs of your patient. Evidence of the effectiveness of home visiting is well established through research and scientific studies demonstrating positive outcomes in maternal and child health, family functioning, and reductions in child maltreatment. The following is a brief literature review illustrating the benefits of early childhood home visiting:

The Rand Report  2016

Council on Community Pediatrics:

  • Improved parenting skills
  • Reduced child behavioral problems
  • Improved child intellectual development
  • Improved maternal employment and education
  • Reduced postpartum/postnatal depression
  • Reduced frequency of unintentional injuries among children
  • Enhanced quality of social supports to mothers
  • Improved rates of breastfeeding

The Heckman Study, 2016
James J. Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist whose research has yielded the often-quoted statistic that investment in high-quality preschool can yield a 7 to 10 percent “rate of return,” has released a new study showing an even greater rate of return for a program that worked with children from infancy to age 5.

Robert Wood Johnson: Home Visits Work, November 2016

American Academy of Pediatrics
July 2014 report on home visiting

Reducing Low Birth Weight Through Home Visitation, A Randomized Controlled Trial
Eunju Lee, Ph.D., Susan D. Mitchell-Herzfeld, MA, Ann A. Lowenfels, MPH, Rose Greene, MA, Vajeera Dorabawila, Ph.D., Kimberly A. DuMont, Ph.D., September 2016

Training for Home Visitors

Home visiting is relationship-based work and it is essential that all staff is trained and supported in their work. Early Impact Virginia works together with each of the home visiting models to provide free, accessible, competency–based professional development.

Visit our career progression page to review EIV’s professional development system.

Visit our training page to review more than 20 on-line training modules and ten classroom training courses.

DOWNLOAD LETTER HERE

A CASE FOR HOME VISITOR REFERRALS

Read Virginia State Health Commissioner, Dr. Marissa J. Levine’s, letter on the impact of home visiting on vulnerable families.

DOWNLOAD LETTER HERE

A PRESCRIPTION FOR HOME VISITING

Use this prescription to connect  patients with home visitors.

Download these print ready pads to use as a tool to encourage home visiting.