Each Child. Every Community.

What is a Range of Home Visiting and Parenting Education (HVPE) Services?

Home visiting and parenting education are prevention strategies used to support pregnant moms and parents to promote infant and child health, foster social-emotional, educational development and school readiness, and help prevent child abuse and neglect. Across the country, high-quality home visiting and parenting education programs offer vital support to parents as they deal with the challenges of raising babies and young children. Participation in these programs is voluntary and families may choose to opt out whenever they want. Home visitors and group parent educators may be trained nurses, social workers or child development specialists. Home visits focus on linking pregnant women with prenatal care, promoting strong parent-child attachment, and coaching parents on learning activities that foster their child’s development and supporting parents’ role as their child’s first and most important teacher. Home visitors also conduct regular screenings to help parents identify possible health and developmental issues.  Group parenting education services focus on strengthening parent-child relationships, building parental confidence and skills in using successful strategies to the manage children’s challenging behaviors and to foster children’s development, and expanding parents’ social networks.

Families differ from one another in the types of parenting supports they need and their desired settings for services.  They also need different types of supports at different points as their children grow and their family situations change.  For example, the birth of a first child is exciting and stressful and can be a very vulnerable time for infants and their caregivers.  Offering one or two home visits to new parents to provide information, assess maternal and infant health, and screen for maternal depression and social and economic supports is helpful to all parents.  Some parents will need no additional immediate supports but may need assistance later if they become concerned about their baby’s development, or their toddler or preschooler’s behavior. At that point, either in-home services or group parenting education could be made available, depending on the family’s situation and the intensity of support needed.  Other parents will need additional services right after their child’s birth and can be connected to the right type of parenting support to meet their needs.

Having a range of parenting services available that span the prenatal through early elementary school years, with different levels of intensity and duration and different modes of service delivery allows families to access what they need when they need it.  Currently more than 20 program models are in place in NC, however, they are not coordinated to best meet families’ needs, and many are only available in a few counties.  No single program model is able to meet the diverse needs of all families just as there is no “one size fits all” approach to parenting.