Home Visiting Programs Motivate At-Risk Mothers to Seek Early Intervention for Infants and Toddlers
Published April 2018 | Maternal and Child Health Journal
Children of at-risk mothers who participate in home visiting programs (HV) are 40 percent more likely to be enrolled in early intervention (EI) services, and differences in intervention utilization are most associated with two developmental time periods: immediately after birth and between ages 2-3.
Those findings emerge from a study by Every Child Succeeds (ECS) examining the impact of home visitation program on developmental delays in children.
Researchers compared data from 3,574 mothers (and their children) who were visited by ECS and a similar number of mothers who were eligible but did not participate. HV services include weekly visits during the first and last four weeks of prenatal service, and weekly visits post-birth that taper to monthly visits until a child reaches age 3. State-provided EI services are federally mandated, but previous studies have found them highly underutilized.
ECS seeks to prevent developmental delays among socioeconomically disadvantaged children—cognitive, social, emotional, adaptive and physical delays that can lead to disruptive behavior, problems interacting with peers, academic failure and poor health outcomes.
Previous studies have shown that interventional screenings, observations, referrals, parental education and other resources can prevent such delays.
“Home visitation appears to be a good measure to motivate families to access these services to improve child development,” says Ted Folger, PhD, Director of Evaluation and Epidemiology for ECS and one of the study’s lead authors. “These results may support expansion of home-visiting services to prevent developmental delays among a particularly vulnerable population.”
Future studies, he says, will examine whether long-term HV programs and EI will impact children’s school readiness and academic performance.
The paper included contributions from the divisions of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, and Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology.
