Family Home Visiting

Early childhood family home visiting (FHV) is a voluntary, home-based intervention used to improve outcomes for mothers, children, and families. FHV provides education, parenting support, and connections to community-based resources for families from the prenatal period through when a child enters kindergarten. Research has demonstrated many positive effects of FHV, including better birth outcomes, lower parental depression, increases in positive parenting skills, increases in school readiness, and reductions in child behavior problems.

The aim of our Center is to partner with the Minnesota Department of Health’s FHV section to co-develop a comprehensive research and evaluation agenda and to connect FHV research and practice. We are also exploring innovative collaborations between FHV and criminal justice settings.

Minnesota implements eight evidence-based family home visiting models:

• Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC)

• Early Head Start (EHS) home-based option

• Family Spirit

• Healthy Families America (HFA)

• Family Connects

• Maternal Early Childhood Sustained Home-Visiting (MECSH)

• Nurse Family Partnership (NFP)

• Parents as Teachers (PAT)