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National Home Visiting Summit

Call for Proposal

June 25 - August 30, 2024

The call for proposal for the 2025 National Home Visiting Summit, Feb. 12-14, 2025 has now closed. Notifications will be sent to submitters early Nov.

Opening the Doors to Systems Change

The National Home Visiting Summit is a conference that integrates policy, practice, and research to influence systems change, with the goal of advancing equitable and high-quality home visiting services, structures, and systems. The Summit provides a platform to advance home visiting as a critical component of the early childhood system.

The 2025 National Home Visiting Summit seeks workshop proposals addressing systems change within the home visiting field and early childhood system of care. Systems change can and should be influenced at multiple levels, including family, workforce, community, state, and federal and should include voices with lived experience and expertise within the early childhood ecosystem.

Acceptance notifications will be sent to submitting authors by early November. Please note that due to the high volume of proposals, we cannot provide feedback for each submission. Authors interested in receiving feedback are encouraged to email the Summit planning team. The review team will do its best to accommodate all requests for feedback.

Important Dates

Open Call: June 26, 2024
Deadline to Submit Proposal: August 30, 2024 at 11:59 ET
Acceptance Notifications: November 2024

National Home Visiting Summit

Conference Dates & Mission

Call for Proposal Announcement
The 2025 National Home Visiting Summit is an in-person conference. Accepted presenters will be expected to attend in-person. The Summit will be held at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C., from February 12-14, 2025.

Summit Mission: The National Home Visiting Summit aims to integrate policy, practice, and research to influence systems change, with the goal of advancing equitable and high-quality home visiting services, structures, and systems. Learning, collaboration, and knowledge-to-practice transfer at the Summit are meant to advance home visiting as a critical component of the early childhood system.

Audience

The Summit is designed for state and federal administrative and legislative systems leaders, federal, state, and local policy advocates, researchers, program and practice leaders, direct service providers, parents/caregivers and philanthropic partners interested in information that supports and strengthens their role as decision-makers and change agents in the home visiting field. Accordingly, each session is an important opportunity for speakers to engage leaders on the most pressing and innovative issues concerning the field today.The perspectives and practices of intersectional professionals and families are especially encouraged.

DEIB Principles

Proposals should demonstrate a clear connection to the conference’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) that advances the home visiting field and connected systems of care through innovations, diverse perspectives, and a focus on impact. The centering of parent/caregiver and provider voice, voices which are often intersectional, as well as the voices, ideas, innovations, and solutions of those who have been historically marginalized and undervalued will be elevated and prioritized during the Summit.

Conference Commitment

Conference Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB): Justice demands that we take the necessary steps to reimagine and create systems to ensure that children, families, providers and communities have fair conditions, support, and agency to live free of oppression, with humanity and joy. The home visiting field must continuously grapple with the field’s role in addressing the deep economic, social, and racial disparities that exist in the United States and globally. Systems change happens at every level of home visiting with families and home visitors, supervisors, funders, policy professionals, researchers and community partners all pushing at different leverage points. As drivers of quality and positive change in home visiting across many roles, with varied and often intersectional backgrounds and wisdom, the Summit invites you, through work in policy, practice, research to partner to change the systems on which these inequities were built.

Resources include:

Content Areas of Interest

Content areas of interest of the 2025 Summit include but are not limited to:

Examples within this focus area include:

  • Advocacy approaches for advancing polices that support innovation in home visiting
  • Experiences piloting and scaling innovative approaches for home visiting service delivery
  • Embedding infant mental health consultation within state home visiting systems
  • Short-term in-home partnerships between families, home visitors and other professionals
  • Home visiting’s role in addressing maternal morbidity and mortality especially in under-resourced communities and high priority populations
  • Parent leadership innovations; serving LGBTQ families
  • Home visiting and climate change policy implications
  • Home visitor and family led initiatives
  • Lessons learned from tribal home visiting systems
  • Emerging research on family economic well-being supports in home visiting etc.

Examples within this focus area include:

  • Community Health Worker home visits
  • Home visiting in center-based settings
  • The strengths of and co-design processes used by community-designed home visiting models; home visiting approaches outside the U.S.
  • Policy and systems building efforts to scale collaboration between universal short term home visiting and longer-term parent supports
  • Aligning early intervention (IDEA Part C) state systems with home visiting etc.
  • Universal home visiting

Examples within this focus area include:

  • Learning from Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) child welfare collaborations with home visiting
  • Partnering to support caregivers with substance use concerns; medical legal partnerships and home visiting
  • Early Intervention collaborations
  • Home visiting and public housing partnerships

Examples within this focus area include:

  • State level approaches to Medicaid financing for home visiting; maximizing MIECHV match funding
  • Building foundation and community level financing; braiding state and federal funding
  • And innovative financing strategies like pay-for-success or other models etc.

Examples within this focus area include:

  • State and local policy approaches to improving recruitment and retention
  • Policy efforts to reduce the administrative burden for programs and providers
  • Research on reflective supervision approaches; career laddering models
  • Grow-your-own staff recruitment and career laddering projects
  • And other workforce pipeline innovations etc.

Selection Criteria & Requirements

The 2025 National Home Visiting Summit steering committee, comprised of thought leaders from the home visiting and early childhood field, has worked collaboratively with conference organizers to inform the development of the conference DEIB commitment, content areas of focus, and selection criteria. As a result, the steering committee and conference organizers will use the following framework for selecting proposals.   

Conference Objectives

  1. Contribute to and be a catalyst for field-building investments to design and strengthen the systems and infrastructure needed to ensure equitable ongoing program quality and to facilitate the commitment of increased public and private investments over time.
  2. Provide leaders in the home visiting field and connected systems of care with a national forum for the exchange of best practices, emerging concepts and lessons learned across systems, states and models on the most relevant topics, adaptations and emerging challenges facing the home visiting field.
  3. Promote and highlight issues of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging with an emphasis on re-creating systems to ensure that all children and families are supported fairly and equally.
  4. Facilitate building strong national partnerships with local, state and national leaders to increase systems influence and inform policy nationwide.

Guiding Criteria

Proposals addressing key areas of focus for the 2025 Summit that are submitted by and/or include representation of parent/caregiver and provider voice and that center voices which may include but are not limited to:

  • Tribal home visiting programs
  • Community-based home visiting approaches
  • Immigrant and refugee serving programs, practices and experiences
  • Urban and rural community systems builders and frontier experiences
  • Honoring Diverse Family Structures (e.g. father involvement, LGBTQ families, families with disabilities)
  • The session content and speakers share the systems change and innovation work that the larger field can learn from at community, state and/or federal levels.
  • Preference is given to presentations that align with the systems change/field-building vision of the Summit by highlighting important systems issues at all levels of home visiting from local programs to state policy, national research and policy, innovative or field-advancing practice(s), and creative/unique collaborations and partnerships.
  • Proposals that highlight cross-sector collaborations and/or systems building efforts and/or which feature speakers from various roles in the home visiting (and/or related) field will receive priority consideration.
  • The session content and speakers promote inclusion and diversity within the context of the presentation and broader home visiting field. Proposals should speak directly to issues of DEIB when possible. Please provide specific examples when submitting.

Continuing Education Units

For the first time the National Home Visiting Summit will offer Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for workshops and plenary sessions. CEUs will be issued via standards set up by Start Early as an accredited organization via the International Accreditors for Continuing Education and Training (IACET).

To meet the necessary standard to issue CEUs all proposals must include measurable learning outcomes and specific engagement strategies grounded in adult learning principles and relevance for the Summit audience. Technical assistance is available during the submission process to support authors. Please take a moment to review the following resources:

Registration

Speaker Registration Rates

Workshop Speaker/Poster Presenter   $449

Travel and Registration for Home Visiting Parents and Caregivers
Limited funds are available for parents and caregivers engaged in home visiting services participating as speakers at the Summit will receive the following to support participation:

  • Complimentary registration
  • Complimentary accommodations at the meeting location for two nights (Feb. 12 – Feb. 13)
  • Flight or ground transportation reimbursement
  • Daily stipend and child care award
  • Honorarium

Presenting at the Summit

The 2025 National Home Visiting Summit is an in-person event. We will not offer the option to speak virtually. All speakers and presenters must be present at the event in Washington, D.C. to participate.

Creating an Accessible Presentation: We ask that all PowerPoint and print-ready materials be prepared in consideration of those with visual limitations. Consideration of color contrast between text and background, font size, use of alternative text for images shared are all important. Tips on creating more accessible presentations can be found at Section508.gov.

We also encourage teams to review these resources from the Web Accessibility Initiative on preparing slides and materials. Start Early will offer a conference branded PowerPoint template that includes accessible formatting as an optional resource for presenting teams. Start Early staff may offer further recommendations on design in meetings with presenters once a proposal has been accepted.

For best practices that include presenting live you can find support here.

Session Formats

Workshop Session

Session Length: 60 minutes
Delivery Method: Live (in-person format)
Session Description: Explore topics of common interest using innovative, thought-provoking content blended with audience participation. Presenters act as content leaders, presenting short segments of content and then leading engaging activities, group discussions, and participant reflection on how to apply knowledge to practice.

Attendees participating will engage via opportunities for Q&A and small-group discussion. Meeting rooms will include a mix of tables and theater style seating. Estimated attendance for workshops will range from 70-120+.

Successful proposals will clearly state learning objectives and attendee engagement strategies used in the workshop session.

Workshop speakers are required to present in person at the conference. You will be asked to declare your availability during the abstract submission process.

Example Proposal

Poster Presentation

Session Length: 90 minutes (live)
Delivery Method: Live (in-person format)
Each poster team will receive an in-person booth to host their poster and associated materials. Guidance for recommended printed poster size will be provided. Conference participants engaging in person will have the opportunity to walk around the poster session and engage directly with speakers for Q&A.

Example Proposal

Help Me Decide

Session Length: N/A
Delivery Method: N/A
Session Description: Submit your presentation idea and work with the conference organizer on determining the best format for your session.

Speaker & Session Requirements

  • The Summit encourages presenters to consider limiting speaking teams to 3 individuals. In circumstances where the speaker team is more than 3-individuals in your proposal, please describe the purpose for including the larger speaker team and how everyone will be incorporated into the presentation.  Start Early reserves the right to reduce the size of proposed speaking teams if the number exceeds 3.
  • Speakers presenting must commit to in-person in Washington, D.C., on February 12-14, 2025. The conference organizer will assign session times in November. You will be asked to declare your availability during the abstract submission process.
  • All accepted speakers are required to complete Start Early’s speaker agreement form.
  • All presenters in workshop sessions must attend a planning meeting with the conference organizing team to review logistics, virtual streaming (as applicable), content, and field questions.
  • The conference organizer plans for approximately 650-725 in-person attendees.
  • All speakers must register for the conference by selecting the “speaker” registration type.

Submission Process

Submission Process

The submission process utilizes an online abstract management website powered by Cvent. The submitting author will create a username and password for the website, upload speaker bios/headshots, and complete the questions for the speaking team. The abstract management website allows you to save your progress and return to the website to complete/edit your proposal. You will receive a confirmation email after submitting your proposal. The Call for Proposal is now closed. A Start Early planning team member will contact you with a decision in early November 2024.

 

Bios & Headshots

The conference organizer requires all speakers to provide bios, with the option to include headshots when submitting their proposals. Bios should include each proposed speaker’s experience related to the session topic. The information provided during the proposal process will be used to create your session’s agenda and website content.

Abstract Submission Questions

To view the abstract submission questions, click here. Please note this document is for reference only. All submissions must be completed online.

Content Management

Content Management for Accepted Proposals: Speakers will be given access to Speaker Resource Center. This portal will be used to upload , session materials, posters, PowerPoints, and all related resources for your session, along with access to update bios/headshots. The portal will save all the information you provided during the call for proposal. Speakers can upload and remove resources before, during, and after the Summit.

Support

We are eager to support you during the submission process. Please email your inquiries to the conference planning team at Events@StartEarly.org.

Call for Proposal Frequently Asked Questions

Acceptance notifications will be sent to submitting authors by early November. Please note that due to the high volume of proposals, we cannot provide feedback for each submission. Authors interested in receiving feedback are encouraged to email the Summit planning team. The review team will do its best to accommodate all requests for feedback.   

We see systems change in home visiting as deeply relational, collaborative work that requires everyone in home visiting and policies, seeking root causes, a wider lens and promoting greater equity with changes in the field. We believe everyone-parents, policymakers, home visitors, funders and others-can be systems change leaders by helping create, implement, and reflect on the best practices and innovations that will push our field forward. The “waters of systems change” framework may be helpful for your thinking.

View Framework

We welcome proposals and speakers from specific home visiting models if the work is widely applicable to the field. For example, a workshop on community level advocacy could be presented by staff from a specific home visiting model, as long as the approaches shared are accessible to others outside that program model.

Engagement approaches that allow time for attendees to consider, discuss, or actively apply key concepts or questions in smaller groups are often well-received. Opportunities for attendees to ask questions are appreciated. Hearing from more than one presenter in a workshop is common. Cross-disciplinary presentation teams and the voice of families engage diverse audiences make for compelling workshops.

Given the large volume of proposals we receive, we do not provide feedback to every proposal author. We try, when staff capacity allows, to provide feedback upon request.

The questions asked during the review process can be viewed below.

View Questions

No, you may save your draft and return to it. 

The submission portal will be open through August 30, 2024. Changes to your presentation can be made up until the deadline. Changes after the deadline will not be accepted. Teams with speaker updates are encouraged to submit those via email to the Summit team.

Email Our Team