This document provides guidance on conducting home visits for social services programs. It discusses the purposes of home visits, which include fostering healthy family development, improving health outcomes, and promoting school readiness. Reasons for conducting home visits include assessing the home environment, verifying information, and understanding the family's situation. Goals of home visits include empowering clients, promoting self-sufficiency, and ensuring child and family well-being. The document provides tips for safety, engagement, and effective service delivery during home visits.

1. Home Visits
Don Johnson, Washoe Native TANF Training Facilitator
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2. The Importance of Home Visits
1. What are some primary purposes of
Home Visitations?
2. What are 3 reasons for conducting
Home Visits?
3. What are 3 goals of Home
Visitation?
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3. What is our motivation?
Why is it so important to
know and understand
effective Home Visitation?
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Pew Interview Video

4. Training Expectations
1. Participants will be able to define
some of the primary purposes of
Home Visits.
2. Participants will be able to identify
and explain at least 3 reasons for
conducting Home Visits.
3. Participants will be able to list at
least 3 goals of Home Visitation.
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5. Purpose of Home Visits
• Foster healthy beginnings of family development
• Improve pregnancy outcomes
• Promote school readiness
• Prevent child abuse and neglect
• Reduce juvenile delinquency
• Promote positive parenting and resiliency in
children
• Promote family health and economic self-
sufficiency for children and families.
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6. Purpose of Home Visits
• Make our clients feel empowered
• Not abuse the power we have over them
(strong influence on whether they become self-reliant or not)
• Visit their home any time without warning
• Seeing each family member reported to
live in the home
– verify that documentation is accurate
– rule out possible fraud.
• Understand “no cooperation, no benefits”
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7. How to Implement the Policy
• Review history of your client prior to your visit
• Consult with supervisor regarding keeping
appointment or not
• Home visits are not required!
• Fact verification home visits always unannounced
• “Vehicle Authorization Form”
• “Home Visit Form”
• Signed approval of site manager (cc: Deputy Director)
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8. Pre-visit Preparation & Precautions
• Familiarity with client case file and location
• Alternate or back-up plan
• Decisiveness - what criteria will cause home visit to be aborted
• Someone else knows address (Vehicle Authorization Form)
• Use the buddy system
• Drive by before your first visit
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9. Pre-visit Preparation & Precautions
• Be aware of potential entrances and exits
• Ask client identity of those who enter
• Safe to sit down? (observe front door / other
entrances)
• Restrain pets
• Fully charged cell phone
• Strong cell signal?
• Be prepared to remove yourself
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10. Pre-visit Preparation & Precautions
• Law enforcement contact
– recent dangerous activity in area?
– fore warn them of your intent
• Always prepared to cancel for what seems
like “no good reason”
• Morning visits preferred
– Never schedule in questionable
neighborhoods during dark hours
• Focus on “family development reasoning”
• Plan to develop mutual respect and trust
• Consider how you will keep your
confidentiality
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Success
Stories
Videos

11. Organization and Time Management
• Arrange visits with clients who live near each
other for efficiency
• Schedule around school release times and
client schedules
• Prepare binder organized with needed forms
• List of other agencies / community resources
• Confirm appointment (for pre-arranged visits)
• Take anecdotal notes / record items later
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12. In-Home Considerations
• Prepare diligently
• Verify who is living in the home
• Map out location if unfamiliar
• Do not sit down until comfortable with your
own safety
• Keep an eye on the door
• Stay close to the door
• Use “Home Visit Protocol”
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13. Advantages of Home Visits
• Attention to our clients’ home environment
• How it affects their functioning and well-being
for assessment and case planning:
– Conditions of the home
– Safety concerns
– Status of neighborhood and community
• Reduce the power differential (inherent in
working with mandated clients)
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14. Advantages of Home Visits
• Interventions delivered in the home since
the home is where problems often occur
• Service barriers avoided
• Limited transportation
• Scheduling conflicts
• Warranted if a client has disappeared
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Layla was born 2 years ago, 6 weeks early. She was addicted to
methadone and had marijuana in her system. She was moody, had the
jerks and would lose her breath. It was very scary. My childhood wasn’t
that great but I knew I wanted better for Layla.
But taking care of a baby alone is hard. I didn’t know how to do all those
things a baby needs. When I got the call from Catawba Valley Healthy
Families asking me if I wanted to join their program, I couldn’t believe it.
Here was someone wanting to teach me how to take care of my
daughter. And if I was going to have a chance to give Layla a better life, I
needed help.
Morgan with Barium Springs has been coming to see us for a while now.
She answers my questions about baby stuff. She brings books for me to
read to Layla. She helps me remember all the doctor’s appointments. We
work together to make sure Layla is doing things a baby should do at her
age.
Today, I have a 2 year old daughter who is healthy and happy. We go to
church, go to the park and read stories at night. She’s 2 and doesn’t listen
sometimes, but Morgan has showed me how not to get angry. She’s
coached me on disciplining Layla the right way. I don’t want Layla to be
afraid or get hurt when she gets in trouble like I did.
OneFather’sStory

16. Family Development Approach
• Build mutually respectful relationship
• Maintain confidentiality
• Help the family assess their situation
• FSP completed prior (review)
• Communicate effectively
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Enhanced
Home
Visits
Video

17. Family Development Approach
• Increase your cultural competence
• Guide a family to self-sufficiency
• Persuade them to think in terms of you
and them being a team toward
becoming successful
• Only be there as their guide
• They must buy-in
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18. Family Development Approach
• Instill that sense of pride
• You must help your client-family envision
themselves as a thriving self-sufficient family at
any level
• Instill cultural values
• Their family pride of accomplishment is their
number one priority in life
• No matter how difficult that is you are there to
guide them to that goal
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19. Seeing with Other Eyes
• See the world through the client’s eyes
• See how the client sees self in it
• Understand family relationships,
interactions & values
• Promote case management partnership
• Assess strengths & risk factors
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20. Seeing with Other Eyes
Note:
• Parenting skills
• Health & safety issues in the home
• Additional resources (neighbors,
home computer…)
• Evidence that basic needs are not
being met
• Evidence of “red flags”
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21. Seeing with Other Eyes
Observe:
• Neatness, orderliness
• Sparse? Cluttered?
• Furnishings
• Organization: “a place for everything
& everything in its place”
• Quantities: “lots of this, a little of
that”
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22. Benefits of Home Visits
• Increased rates of child
immunizations, health care &
prenatal care
• Reduced rates of abusive &
neglectful parenting behaviors
• Improved employment & academic
goal attainment
• Reductions in use of harsh discipline
• Decreased delinquency among
children
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Benefits
of Home
Visits
Video

23. Benefits of Home Visits
• Improvements in parenting skills
development, knowledge of
appropriate development & knowledge
of factors associated with abuse &
neglect
• Improvements in home environment
related to stressors & parental distress
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24. Benefits of Home Visits
• Permanent improvements in mother’s
life circumstances that result in better
stability & wellbeing for children.
• Increased visiting may cause increase
in reported cases of child neglect &
maltreatment as a result of increased
access to the home
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25. Respect, First Time and Future Visits
• If an announced visit
– Get clear directions / leave yourself extra
time
• If unannounced - TANF brochure /
name badge
– Reassure client
– Ask if they would prefer another time
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26. Respect, First Time and Future Visits
• Within earshot of neighbors? use
your name but not the name of the
program
• Make sure they understand why you
are there
• Be politely persistent
• Family must be ready to take
initiative
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27. Ethical Considerations:
• Blurred boundaries - stay focused on issues,
professional rather than social
• Accepting gifts - use professional discretion
• Confidentiality - Be prepared (Tribal ID)
• Extended family members, neighbors, and
friends
• Community setting, park, fast-food restaurant
• Take the client’s lead
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28. Safety Issues
General
 Noise levels, temperature, numbers
of people & activity levels
 Confined or blind spaces like garage
areas, stairwells, elevators, narrow
corridors & small rooms without
exits
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29. Safety Issues
 Know the neighborhood
 Unsafe & unsanitary homes & yards
 Lice
 Drug manufacturing & paraphernalia
- items such as pipes, foil, razor blades,
straws, mirrors, scales & smells such as
burning & chemicals
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30. Safety Issues
 Weapons
 Intimate partner violence
-the presence of domestic violence in
the home increases the risk of abuse to
the children and your own safety
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31. Safety Issues
 Dogs & other dangerous pets
 Disease exposure
 Sexual threats & violence
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32. Safety Tips
• Speed dial options
• “Phone vibrated” excuse
• Carry only what you’ll need
• Single car key on a key chain-quick exit
• Ready vehicle
• Use restroom before arriving
• Lock car
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33. Ronna smiles when asked how Every Child Succeeds has made a
difference in her life. "I would have been completely lost without it!"
she says, as her two-year-old son, Jayden, chases a bouncing rubber
ball across the room. "When I got pregnant, I wanted to take
responsibility for Jayden, and I wanted to be a good mother. But I had
no idea how to go about it."
Every Child Succeeds matched Ronna with Jenny Berndsen, a home
visitor. Jenny has been meeting with Ronna weekly since Ronna was
eight months pregnant, sharing information with her about baby care,
helping her create a positive home environment for learning and
emotional growth, and encouraging her to finish high school.
"No one in my family was there for me, so I really felt alone at first,"
explains Ronna, who now lives with Jayden in an apartment. "Jenny has
taught me about the importance of reading to Jayden and about which
games are good for his development and even how to get Jayden
evaluated for his speech delays. She has helped me become a good
mother and be more confident in myself."
In June, Ronna will graduate from her High School, where she recently
made honor roll. She plans to attend Cincinnati State and eventually
become a social worker to help children who have experienced abuse
and neglect.
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Ronna’sSuccessStory

34. A home visit is appropriate when…
• The client is first applying for
benefits
• Conflicting information is received
• The client has difficulty attending
appointments
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35. A home visit is appropriate when…
• There is a new family member in
the home.
• The client is not meeting TANF
requirements
• Time limits are due to expire
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36. Predictors of Violence (Danger)
 History of violence
 Sense of powerlessness
 Physical factors
 Domestic violence
 Access to weapons & gang
associations
 Child welfare involvement
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One Friday afternoon, as Jana was on her way to pickup her grandson from school,
she received a very disturbing call. The police had come to her daughter’s
apartment the night before, arrested her for drug involvement and taken her
grandson, David, into the custody of Marin County’s Child Protective Services. After
meeting with CPS, she was able to obtain temporary custody of David and take him
home with her. She was not prepared to instantly become a mother again. David’s
father was in jail and there was no one else she could turn to.
After continuing to drive David to Kindergarten for the remainder of the school
year, Jana enrolled David in first grade. Soon afterward, David began to have some
very difficult issues. He became angry at home and at school. He began crying all
the time, kicking Jana and even talking about killing himself. David clearly was
traumatized by what had happened to him. To make matters worse, Jana’s job cut
her hours from 40 a week to 10. She was at risk of being evicted.
Grandma learning to
be mom again

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Jana called Cope Family Center right away. Cope Family Center was able to help her
design a plan that would address both her and David’s needs. Jana was assigned to
one of Cope’s Home Visitors. Julie immediately sat down with Jana to assess her
family’s needs, set goals and access the resources Jana desperately needed.
With help, Jana obtained emergency aid (rental assistance, food bank), counseling
services, got David into the Boys & Girls Club, and got him a big brother from Big
Brothers-Big Sisters. Cope’s home visiting services acted as Jana’s mentor and
guided her through the crisis. Two years later David is in 3rd grade and loves
school. He is involved in sports and enjoys the stability and attention he receives
from his Big Brother.
Jana’s ultimate goal was to reunite David with his mother, Linda. Linda, too, is now
a Cope home visitation client. With her Home Visitor, Linda has worked hard to
start her life over for her son’s sake. She moved to Napa and enrolled in Napa
Valley Community College. She began going to counseling and learned to make
better choices about drugs. Child Protective Services allowed David to be reunited
with his mother.
Grandma learning to be mom again

39. Terminating the Visit
• Be sure to summarize
• Identify any “to do” items
• Final opportunity to discuss
• Next steps?
• Contact information for follow-up
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40. Post-visit Procedures/Recordkeeping
• Alert office staff that the staff member has safely
exited the visit.
• If neighborhood is deemed to be unsafe make an
exit call
• Document all details as soon as possible
• Condition of the home and its occupants
• As well as any activities that might be considered
unusual
• During arrival, visit, departure
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Resources for Researching Home
Visiting Programs
Web Resources
Child Welfare information Gateway:
www.childwelfare.gov
Harvard Family Research Project Home Visiting
Forum:
www.hfrp.org
Chapin Hall:
www.chapinhall.org
Pew Center on the States:
www.pewcenteronthestates.org
The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for
Child Welfare:
www.cebc4cw.org
Print Resources
Home Visitation for Families with Young Children -
A report from the Congressional Research Service
The Role of Home-Visiting Programs in Preventing
Child Abuse and Neglect - An article in the
journal The Future of Children special issue
on Preventing Child Maltreatment from Fall 2009
Social Science Rising: A Tale of Evidence Shaping
Public Policy - A Policy Brief from Future of
Children, Fall 2009
State-based Home Visiting: Strengthening
Programs Through State Leadership - A report
from the National Center for Children in Poverty,
March 2009 and a webinar from December 2008
Home Visitation in 2005: Outcomes for Children
and Parents - A Working Paper from the Invest in
Kids Working Group by Deanna Gomby, July 2005
The Effectiveness of Early Childhood Home
Visitation in Preventing Violence: A Systematic
Review - An article from the American Journal of
Preventive Medicine, Vol. 28, 2SI, 2005

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Obama’s Home
Visiting Program
For At-Risk Families