6/2012

In recent years, home visiting has expanded as an outreach and service delivery strategy that builds on families’ strengths to increase parents’ capacity for effective parenting and advance the healthy development of children. Home visiting is one tool used to prevent child abuse and improve child well-being by providing education and services in families’ homes through parent education and connection to community resources.

Many children whose families can benefit from home visiting services, however, spend a significant amount of time being cared for by adults other than their parents. Nearly half of infants in their first year are in a weekly non-parental care arrangement, and that increases to almost three quarters of children ages 3 to5 years (see Figure 1). Among infants and toddlers, a significant number are cared for by relatives, friends, or neighbors in informal, home based settings or in family child care settings. Among low-income children ages 0 to5 with employed mothers, just over one in 10 are cared for in family child care settings (11 percent), and 30 percent are cared for by a relative other than their parents (see Figure 2). Home visiting can be an effective service delivery tool to reach out to parents and children in these settings.

Source: CLASP

Available at: http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications/files/Home-Away-from-Home.pdf