Empowering Home Visitors to Improve Communication With Families

A learning collaborative of 12 home visiting programs is lending its voice to pilot test a toolkit designed to improve home visitors’ communication with families. The group of home visitors and supervisors met in Chicago earlier this month to share feedback on the toolkit’s content and 2-day training.

Developed by the Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative (HARC), the toolkit describes communication strategies and their rationale and features video clips of strategies in action. Rubrics and self-assessments will help users track their progress. Users can also learn how to video record their own home visiting sessions.

Members of the collaborative work for home visiting programs across multiple states and models. They will continue meeting monthly in small groups by phone or virtual forum and participate in a wrap-up webinar later this summer. A pre-post evaluation will help project staff assess participants’ learning collaborative experience and any change in knowledge, confidence, and behavior.

HARC is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration. Johns Hopkins University coordinates the project, in collaboration with JBA, Child Trends, and a leadership team of noted home visiting experts.