Virginia Home Visiting Needs Assessment
Virginia is a large and diverse state with a population of more than 8.5 million including more than 700,000 children age 0-6, including an estimated 208,000 in low-income households (with income under 200% of poverty). These children and their families reside in Virginia’s 133 cities and counties, all of which have some level of need for home visiting.
This Virginia Home Visiting Needs Assessment is the product of a statewide collaborative effort to identify strengths and needs in Virginia’s system of home visiting programs. The effort to produce this needs assessment was led by Early Impact Virginia, and informed by dozens of organizations and hundreds of individuals from across Virginia. These stakeholders shared their insights, ideas, and critiques of Virginia’s home visiting system from a wide range of perspectives. This guidance is invaluable for understanding the needs, challenges, and opportunities for optimizing home visiting in Virginia.
The results of this needs assessment are intended to inform the work of multiple audiences, including public agencies, home visiting programs, and advocacy groups. In the following subsections, the Early Impact Virginia mission, members, and partners are described, along with the state and federal directives that guided the needs assessment.
Examples of Data from the Needs Assessment
Virginia Communities with Concentrations of Risk
Concentrations of Risk in Virginia Localities
A concentration-of-risk score was calculated for each locality by summing the point values displayed in maps across all 16 indicators. The resulting concentration-of-risk scores for each locality were then ranked into quartiles from highest (4th quartile) to lowest (1st quartile). The results are illustrated in Exhibit 2.3.
Virginia Home Visiting Programs
Virginia’s 8 Unique Home Visiting Models
Virginia has eight unique, early childhood home visiting models. As shown in Exhibit 3.1, as
of 2020 one or more of these models were implemented in 121 Virginia localities. The localities with the highest number of programs are Norfolk (6) and Richmond (5); 119 localities have 1 to 4 programs, and 12 localities have no home visiting program in operation.
Quality & Capacity of Existing Programs
The Need for Home Visiting
This assessment defines potential community need in terms of the number of children age 0-6 with income below 200% of the federal poverty level. Although this is not the only possible indicator of need, low-income is a prominent factor in most models that predict need for home visiting services. Applying this measure for Virginia, as of 2018 there were an estimated 208,000. Virginia children age 0-6 with income below 200% of poverty. This estimate represents roughly one out of three children age 0-6 statewide.
Exhibit 3.3 provides a map of this population by city and county. Focusing on population counts, the largest numbers of low-income children reside in the most populous cities and counties (Fairfax County, Prince William County, and the cities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Richmond). However, many rural localities have a comparatively high percentage of children age 0-6 with income below 200% of poverty.
