The best personal experience with research participation of children and families comes from my everyday job working with Healthy Families New York. This program is state funded through research-based approaches. While the main focus of the program is to promote child development and prevent child abuse/maltreatment, there are many other topics of significance that the home-visiting program works toward to benefit family well-being.
Through research identified criteria, families work with the program to learn methods and techniques to establish healthy development and well-being for family members. The data collected at home visits consists of the topics of discussion, based on child development, parent-child interaction, and family well-being. Medical visits, demographic information, and frequency of visits are some of the things that are followed in the research data as well.
Through my experience in collecting information about families, I have come to appreciate the research system. The evidence of a home visiting program that follows families beginning prenatally through age 5 years for the "target child" has provided the proof needed in maintaining grant funding. When I enter the necessary data and view reports of what efforts I have made with families and young children, I am resassured that home visiting programs offer a new opportunity for families to have added support and education they may not have had otherwise. Through collecting this data, I am also making strides in preventing child abuse and maltreatment through following guidelines of information and efforts recommended by the program as proven to benefit the families and children.
I encourage anyone interested to view the Healthy Families America website:
http://www.healthyfamiliesamerica.org/about_us/index.shtml
Terri,
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great program! Is your program similar to headstart? Great post, thanks for sharing!
Terri, Are the home visiters early childhood trained? Washington state has a home visiting program but it is operated through the health department and the visitors are nurses. The Gates Foundation has recently funded a training program where the nurses are receiving early childhood training through the University of Washington's infant mental health program and using "Promoting First Relationtionships" curriculum.
ReplyDeleteThe program is similar to HeadStart with the focus on child development and family well-being however, we are strictly a home visiting program. All home visiters in my local program are required to have at least Bachelor's level training although this is not the case for all rpograms. There are many programs with high school level only. However, there is a noted difference in quality and success of the programs with varying levels of training.
ReplyDeleteWow! Sounds like you have quite a bit of really good information available to you! That's really great that you are able to take your work and apply it toward your education right now. It sounds like you have a great opportunity to seriously help families.
ReplyDeleteI have had the opportunity to work very closely with different home visiting programs. The work you do is wonderful and so important; the added support and resources is very appreciated from the families we service.
ReplyDeleteI think this shows the importance of home visits. I think home visits are of vital importance.
ReplyDeleteYou gather a lot of information daily just from working!! That must be great; you have an advantage over a lot of us. Home visits are a good way to see how children are living and to find out what they may be lacking in the home that affects their learning abilities.
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