What We Can Do? - Your Role as a Home Based Visitor

What do you actually do on a home visit? Are you supposed to greet a family in a certain way? Do you fill out particular forms? Are you expected to say or do specific things? In reality, no two home visits look exactly alike. You bring your own temperament, personality, beliefs, and values to any role you have. Each family similarly comprises its own personalities, history of relationships, and cultural and familial values. Your relationship with each family is influenced by this rich past and is further colored by current circumstances—including variables such as how confident you feel in your job, the amount of support you receive from your agency, and your own personal life circumstances. Families are also influenced by their current situations—job stability, financial concerns, housing, or the quality of their relationships with others. Given this complexity, we can offer no simple answer to the question what do you do on a home visit? However, the following three principles provide a framework for how you can approach each home visit, despite the great variability in the families with whom you work. Each of the next three points will be discussed further in the following sections.

You are in the home to support child development, the overall goal of the Head Start program. Thus, one of the first tasks you must accomplish with each family is to identify that family’s child development goals. Your challenge is to ensure that each home visit maintains a focus on those goals. Your program’s approach to curriculum helps you to meet goals for children’s development and learning by providing experiences to meet those goals, by identifying the roles of staff members and parents, and by identifying the necessary materials and equipment.

You recognize parents as their children’s first and most important teachers. You support parents so they can best support their children. You provide comprehensive Head Start services to families because children do best when you attend to all areas of their development—physical, social, cognitive, and emotional. Similarly, parents are best able to provide the support their children need when their own needs for a healthy lifestyle are met—physical and emotional health, social support, adult education or job skills, financial stability, and safe housing.

You capitalize on the learning opportunities in the home environment. The home-based program is effective in fostering healthy development because you use the setting in which children and families spend the majority of their time. You emphasize how everyday routines provide meaningful opportunities for children to build on their developmental skills. You help parents understand how simple household items and experiences captivate children’s imagination and promote learning. For example, literacy experiences occur as parents talk and sing with their children, as they follow a recipe during a cooking activity, or as they name objects in the grocery store. You also support and empower parents to recreate and build on these learning experiences for their children during the time between home visits. These repeated experiences have a significant influence on learning and development, helping children to gain the motivation and curiosity to learn as well as the specific language, literacy, and numeric skills essential for success later in school.

Developmental Screening, Ongoing Assessment, and Curriculum Planning: One of your first tasks with a family is to conduct a developmental screening (within 45 days of entry into the program) to identify any concerns about a child’s developmental functioning. The screening process helps you decide whether developmental skills are progressing as expected or whether certain concerns indicate the need for further evaluation. An important point to remember is that the screening process does not lead to a decision about whether or not a child has a developmental delay. Developmental screening is, by definition, a process to determine whether further evaluation is necessary. The screening process begins during the enrollment period as you build partnerships with families and initiate Head Start services. Screening requires more than filling out a formal tool such as a checklist or form. Developmental screening involves observing the child as well as learning from parents and other significant caregivers about the child’s development and behavior.

Parents take an active role in the developmental screening, ongoing assessment, and evaluation of their children. Parents know their children best. They can tell you how their children typically act, the skills their children have, and their children’s likes and dislikes. They are also the ones with whom their children are most at ease and will therefore act more naturally, demonstrating their true abilities. The results of the screening and ongoing assessment are used to inform your goal setting with families and to track progress over time. If you discover a concern about a child’s development, the next step is to get a more in-depth evaluation from your local early intervention program. For infants and toddlers under the age of 3 years, contact your Part C. For preschoolers ages 3–5 years, contact the Preschool Grants program.  Ideally, your Head Start program has strong collaborative relationships with these community providers that enable the referral and follow-up to occur in a timely and effective manner.