Exploring Home Visiting’s Unmet Need: Comparing Who Could Benefit to Who Is Served

More than 286,000 families received evidence-based home visiting services in 2018. Services were implemented across a wide swath of the country, including all 50 states, the District of Columbia, 5 territories, and 51 percent of U.S. counties.

Despite home visiting’s reach, the need for services is greater than its footprint. In 2018, the NHVRC looked at measures of need to help readers navigate the gap between available resources and the roughly 18 million families who could benefit according to their estimates.

This NHVRC brief used data from the recently released 2019 Home Visiting Yearbook to explore the following questions:

• What percentage of potential beneficiaries and high-priority families are served by home visiting?
• How does the percentage of children served vary by child age?
• How does the percentage of unmet need vary by state?

It concludes with several suggestions for states and home visiting models.