Home visitation is a key component of many prevention programs. These services range from intensive, frequent visits to periodic or one-time in-home evaluations.

Evaluations of home visiting programs have found mixed benefits and there has been a push in recent years to improve the overall implementation and quality of services.

One national initiative in the home visitation field is the creation of the Home Visit Forum. This group is working with several national partners to increase service delivery efficiency, develop practice benchmarks that can improve quality, and create a better understanding of the role that home visitation can play in state and national systems to help young children and their families.

For more information on the Home Visit Forum, visit their website. For more information on the Children's Bureau Supporting Evidence-Based Home Visitation Grants, please visit their website.

Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness

The Department of Health and Human Services launched Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) to conduct a thorough and transparent review of the home visiting research literature and provide an assessment of the evidence of effectiveness for home visiting program models that target families with pregnant women and children from birth to age 5. To carry out the HomVEE review, Mathematica Policy Research conducted a thorough search of the research literature on home visiting, issued a call for studies to identify additional research, reviewed the literature, assessed the quality of research studies, and evaluated the strength of evidence for specific home visiting program models.  More information about the Evidence Review and the website can be found by following this link.

FRIENDS Resources on Home Visiting
 Home Visiting Programs: A Brief Overview of Selected Models