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Home visiting delivers early education and support to families where they are—in the homes and on their terms. Through stand-alone programs or in partnership with center-based services, voluntary home visiting educates families, brings them up-to-date information about health, child development, and school readiness, works with them to develop their child’s literacy and language skills, and connects them to critical services. Home visiting is a bridge that links the resources of the community with the comfort of the home environment, empowering even hard-to-reach parents to build a better future for themselves and their children.  Download Home Is Where the Start Is White Paper on Home Visiting In New York State, there are a number of evidence-based programs available. Two of those programs, including Healthy Families New York and the Nurse-Family Partnership, are currently at risk as the governor has recommended a reduction in funding for both. Home visitation is designed as part of a model of prevention. Home visitation aims to keep families safe, healthy, self-sufficient, and connected to support resources. This approach serves not only families directly, but broader communities as well; over time, the initial investment in home visitation serves to reduce future costs associated with health care, social services, criminal justice, special education, high school drop-outs, and the child welfare system. Home visitation programs demonstrate improved health, development, and abuse prevention, including dramatic reductions in the incidence of low birth-weigh babies, sustained access to primary care providers and health insurance, mothers’ reduced use of harmful substances (cigarettes, alcohol, drugs), more positive parenting attitudes, less psychological abuse, physical punishment, and neglect. Prevention services in general are underfunded and a low priority on our state’s economic agenda. The complexity and volume of need among families and young children in this nation far exceeds the capacity of any one of our programs. Therefore, communities need a range of effective prevention services for children and families. Home visitation is a service delivery strategy that is essential to better support our state’s youngest children. In building relationships with parents and children in their home environments, home visitation is a uniquely valuable approach to nurturing parental competence and successful early childhood development. In many ways, parenting is more difficult than ever before. Yet despite the overwhelming importance of parenting in the early years of a child’s life, as a state, we invest few public resources on improving parenting practices through parent education and parent support. In the past, New York has made a very small early investment in parenting to help ensure healthy child development, school readiness, and school success and stem the tide of a whole host of health care, social service, criminal justice, special education, and child welfare costs in the future. Any decrease in funding ensures higher instances of low birthweight babies, mothers’ use of harmful substances, and reduced access to needed medical care. The costs associated with these occurrences are immediate. Long-term costs are exponentially more. Hundreds of children will be subjected to child abuse and neglect and families will fall further into poverty. Research has proven that home visitation prevents child maltreatment. Not funding these programs ensures a dramatic increase in the instances of abuse and neglect. |
We are the New York State chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America. Call 1-800-CHILDREN to reach your state's chapter. |
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| Prevent Child Abuse NY | 33 Elk Street, 2nd Floor | Albany, NY 12207 | | P: 518-445-1273 | 1-800-CHILDREN | F: 518-436-5889 | | |
