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ERIC Number: EJ1220078
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1054-8289
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Home Visiting for First-Time Parents: Community Innovation
Kilburn, M. Rebecca; Cannon, Jill S.
Future of Children, v29 n1 p81-97 Spr 2019
In this article, M. Rebecca Kilburn and Jill S. Cannon report on First Born, a targeted universal home visiting program operating in over half of New Mexico counties. Created in a small town in response to a lack of support for pregnant women and new parents, First Born adapts features of other home visiting programs, responding to conditions common to high-need, lowresource communities. As its name suggests, First Born enrolls first-time families. A team of home visitors, including a registered nurse or other licensed health care professional and a paraprofessional parent educator, offers 40 weekly home visits during the child's first year; the frequency of visits diminishes during the child's second and third year. The nurse visits the home both before and after the child's birth, and also when medical issues are the focus of visit. Because nurses are in short supply in many communities, however, most of the home visits are made by parent educators, who coordinate with the nurse visitor. To promote early childhood health and development, First Born educates parents and helps them access community resources, using a three-pronged approach: helping the family to develop life and social skills, such as decision-making, crisis intervention, and knowledge of child development; using screening tools to identify problems (for example, substance dependency or developmental delays) and referring families to the appropriate sources of help; and promoting effective coordination among community resources. Based on First Born's scale-up experience, Kilburn and Cannon outline several lessons for other universal programs, including the pros and cons of universal services, the expectation that universal programs will have population-level impact, and barriers to innovation.
Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution. 267 Wallace Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544. Tel: 609-258-6979; e-mail: FOC@princeton.edu; Web site: http://futureofchildren.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Adult Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: New Mexico
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A