Home visiting is a voluntary service designed to ensure that families with young children have the supports and resources they want and need to thrive. They aim to strengthen caregiver-child relationships; promote maternal, infant, and early childhood physical, mental, and emotional health; and link families to community resources and services through cross system collaboration.

The Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) presents an opportunity to strengthen prevention efforts like home visiting and to expand them to more families. FFPSA is federal legislation that reorients child welfare towards prevention and seeks to reduce the use of foster care. Since we know the power of home visiting in preventing child welfare involvement, bringing it to scale could be critical in fulfilling Family First’s goal. Many states are centering their Family First prevention plans around voluntary home visiting, and some are creating pathways for families to access these services in their communities, without child welfare involvement.

In a new brief, experts from Start Early and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago outline ways to scale up home visiting capacity through Family First. The brief explores key opportunities that have been identified as Family First is implemented and provides recommendations to strengthen collaboration between child welfare and home visiting programs at the federal, state, and local levels, including:

• Scale Up Home Visiting for Additional Capacity
• Partner and Collaborate Across Child Welfare & Home Visiting for Collective Impact
• Implement Home Visiting to Model Fidelity
• Orient Philosophies and Policies around Prevention
• Support a Diverse Community-based Workforce that Meets Families’ Needs

Center Family Engagement

At the 2022 National Home Visiting Summit hosted by Start Early, there was a strong emphasis on the connections between home visiting and FFPSA. The focus on Family First at the Summit reflects the interest across the country to further lean into systems partnerships between home visiting and child welfare agencies to create structural conditions that provide access to supports without stigma or blame. In this way, we can acknowledge and address the inequities that harm children and families of color and lead to further disparities and disproportionate representation in the child welfare system. Read the full report.

Learn more about Start Early’s resources and learning opportunities for the home visiting field.

Many states and communities are working hard to create cross-sector early childhood systems that children and families experience as equitable, supportive, accessible, and high-quality. Start Early and Child Trends have partnered to identify what building blocks are needed to create such systems.

Using a human-centered design approach, between 2021 – 2023, we spoke to state systems’ representatives, researchers, family advocates, and technical assistance providers from across the country to understand how their systems were working to promote equity and center families’ experiences, and what resources they may need to engage in such work. To help augment these discussions, we listened to recorded interviews and reviewed more than 25 early childhood systems frameworks, toolkits, and action plans from multiple organizations, states, and communities across the country.

The briefs in this series, called Conversation Starters, offer a guiding framework that outlines an approach to co-defining the success of an early childhood system in terms of how it is experienced by families. The systems builders consulted in this publication each expressed a clear vision for the kind of system they were trying to co-create with families and what they wanted families to experience when interacting with their system. But none of them—not even those from systems that are deservedly held up as shining examples—felt that they had it all figured out. They continue to strive for new ways to make their system more family-centric, more equitable, and more transparent.

In my work, I interchangeably use the terms “Hispanic” and “Latinx/e” to refer to individuals whose cultural background originated in Latin American and/or Spanish-speaking countries or are descendants of persons from those countries. I want to acknowledge that Hispanic or Latinx/e individuals in the United States represent diverse countries of origin with unique histories and cultures. Hereafter, I will use “Hispanic” to describe this population.

Over recent decades, the racial-ethnic demographic composition of children in the United States has rapidly shifted, with Hispanic children largely contributing to these changes. Only 9% of U.S. children were Hispanic in 1980; today, over a quarter of children are Hispanic, and by 2050, it is predicted that nearly one in every three children will be Hispanic. This represents a dramatic increase in the number of those who are eligible for early care and education (ECE). In response to this rapidly growing population, new lines of research have emerged to inform and advance practices and policies that support Hispanic children and families’ well-being.

Recent studies consistently demonstrate that participation in high-quality ECE programs is beneficial for Hispanic children’s academic, developmental, and family outcomes; and in some instances, such programs serve as a protective factor in mitigating adversity or negative experiences among Hispanic children and families. As this evidence continues to mount, some researchers have shifted their priorities to focus on linkages between Hispanic children and families’ enrollment in ECE and their well-being in the challenging landscape of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tumultuous nature of the pandemic has corresponded with new studies unpacking hardships experienced by Hispanic children and families; these studies are often grounded in a deficit viewpoint. While researchers are building a much-needed knowledge base, the use of a strengths-based view is essential for uncovering protective factors, like engaging in ECE programs, that may serve as a buffer for Hispanic children and families from the challenges of the pandemic.

In contrast with other ECE research and the mostly bleak narratives circulating in the media about the negative effects of the pandemic on child and family well-being, results from these descriptive analyses of Educare Learning Network data found that Hispanic children and families demonstrated a variety of social-emotional related strengths. Findings and data from this sample may not generalize to other Hispanic children and families given that these children and families are enrolled in Educare—a model Early/Head Start program demonstrating higher than average program quality. However, changing the narrative and highlighting positive findings related to child and family well-being during the pandemic can potentially inform Early/Head Start and other ECE programs’ efforts to effectively support Hispanic children and families. These descriptive findings cannot yet speak to why this sample of young Hispanic children and their families did not demonstrate declines in these indicators of well-being or how child and family well-being will look in the long run; but they can help emphasize the importance of high-quality ECE and contribute further evidence that positive experiences in the early years may provide a buffer to the challenges faced by children and families, including those resulting from the pandemic.

Find information about research and evaluation within the Educare Learning Network at EducareSchools.org.

As parents and caregivers grapple with climate anxiety (their own and their children’s) and how to discuss climate change with their families, one thing remains certain: we all want a safe, healthy and joyful future for the children in our lives.

Although only about half of parents have had the climate change conversation with their little ones, 3 out of 4 Americans (74%) feel they have a “moral obligation” to make the world a better place by addressing climate change not only for their own children and grandchildren, but for all children to come.¹ This starts with understanding the latest information about how our world is changing and what those impacts will look like for different communities, populations and systems.

Enter > the AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 (AR6), the latest report from the United Nations’ body on climate change (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or IPCC), released this past March. The report summarizes what we know about the status of climate change worldwide, the trends that are emerging, what impacts are taking hold and for whom, and what policies and actions are likely to slow down foreseeable effects.

From my standpoint as a parent and early childhood and climate justice advocate, here are my five big takeaways from this landmark report:

1. “The extent to which current and future generations will experience a hotter and different world depends on choices now and in the near term.”
The IPCC has “high confidence” that – unless we quickly make drastic cuts to emissions – global temperature change will exceed 2.7°F (1.5°C) during the 21st Century, a threshold that would trigger more severe climate events, humanitarian impacts and systems disruptions. The report indicates that if current emissions trends continue, climate change will progress rapidly, and we will not be on a path to creating a safe and just world for our children.

Frighteningly, it adds that children born in 2020 could see a global temperature change of up to 4°C in their lifetime if global emissions reach “very high” levels, but emphasizes that “future experiences depend on how we address climate change,” and that “the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years”— important reminders to those who care about the future of young children.

2. Climate change is inclusive of more than just the weather.
When you think of climate change, it’s hurricanes, floods and droughts that most often come to mind. But the AR6 reminds us that the actual climate event is just one piece, as they also have significant widespread and long-term impacts on the systems we rely on to support ourselves and our children, like food and health care. It also emphasizes that successful climate change adaptation must include “increasing health systems resilience” and “improving access to mental health care,” both of which are likely to see increased demand as climate change progresses.

Ensuring that our food, health care and other systems meet the distinct needs of infants and young children – even amidst increased overall demand – will take us together making the case that climate change is an early childhood issue, and advocating for our youngest children where climate change adaptation and mitigation is discussed.

3. We must place the needs of climate-vulnerable and historically marginalized groups at the center of climate adaptation.
Though young children and pregnant people are mentioned only sparingly in the version of the AR6 that is currently available (and we hope to see that change in future reports), the authors frequently point out that the needs of climate-vulnerable and historically marginalized groups must be at the center of climate adaptation efforts.

The AR6 points out that some of the best climate change adaptation efforts are inclusive of “carefully designed and implemented laws, policies, participatory processes and interventions” that address the specific contexts and inequities experienced by these groups. The authors also remind us that what is good for the climate is often mutually reinforcing to human health and well-being, citing the example that “improved access to clean energy sources and technologies generate health benefits, especially for women and children.” They also share the importance of integrating climate resiliency into social protection programs that are supported by strong “basic services and infrastructure.” As far as we’re concerned, that includes strong early childhood systems and greater access to child care, home visiting, and doula services.

4. Grassroots movements have likely made a difference.
The AR6 indicates that public awareness campaigns and social movements have likely pushed governments and other decision-makers to set more ambitious targets to address climate change. These movements have “helped accelerate political commitment and global efforts,” have served as “catalyzing agents,” and, in some cases, have “influenced the outcome and ambition of climate governance” in various regions across the globe. If you have been part of those campaigns, take this section of the AR6 as a sign of encouragement that the movement you were a part of contributed to change.

5. Continued engagement and advocacy around climate change is essential to reducing emissions and creating a brighter future for our children.
The AR6 emphasizes that active participation in inclusive planning processes in our communities is key to slowing climate change and ensuring that we are resilient to climate events in the years ahead. The authors state that “inclusive governance processes facilitate effective climate action” and “climate resilient development benefits from drawing on diverse knowledge.”

If we want climate-adapted communities that are safe and supportive of our youngest children, the “diverse knowledge” that informs climate planning must include the expertise you have developed as a caregiver about what infants and children in your community need and what resources are available to families. Get involved in local planning efforts and encourage organizations in your community to make use of the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice grants, including the Environmental Justice Small Grants Program.

For more big take aways from the AR6 report, check out summaries from NPR and climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe.

Start Early is a proud member of the Early Years Climate Action Task Force, a group cross-sector group of early childhood and climate change leaders who are writing the first U.S. Early Years Climate Action Plan. Be the first to know when we share the final plan this fall.

¹ Anya Kamenetz. (2022). “This of the Children: The Young–And Future Generations–Drive US Climate Concern.” The Aspen Institute & Capita Social, Inc.: Washington, DC.

In this peri-Covid period, it would be fair to ask, “How can we go beyond recruitment and retention given the shortage of home visitors right now?” After all, supervisors in community-based programs have never worked so hard to find and onboard new home visitors who are racially, culturally, and linguistically representative of families served while also trying to retain the ones who remain. For those of us connected to home visiting who are not supervisors, it is time to examine the systemic conditions that fuel pervasive vacancy and turnover, and to consider changes that could make a real difference both now and in the future for local programs.

Supervisors Know What’s Wrong With the Home Visiting Sector at the ‘Front Door’:

Interested candidates don’t meet educational job requirements set at the systems level. Are we turning away candidates with racial, language and community experience in common with the families served because they didn’t have an opportunity to pursue a degree? Perhaps we could make progress in achieving greater cultural alignment in the workforce with the families in home visiting, if we re-weighted personal attributes, life experience, and competencies as ‘proxies’ for job requirements based on economic opportunity.

Salaries are not competitive nor commensurate with the nature of the work. Let’s face it, there are many jobs that require less training, breadth of expertise, and emotional resiliency that pay the same or more. To retain this critical workforce, we need to advocate for higher salaries that match the expertise that home visitors bring to their work with families, nurture existing job benefits (e.g., partnership and support of peers; ongoing on-the-job professional development), and support opportunities for advancement.

Supervisors Also Know What’s Wrong with the Home Visiting Sector at the ‘Back Door’:

Job expectations keep expanding. Constantly expanding and/or changing expectations for breadth of expertise to keep the job they have, and at the same salary, is experienced by some home visitors as an invitation to leave their work with families.

Lack of opportunities for advancement. There is a need for better defined career ladders driven by the goals and aspirations of the workforce. This isn’t new, but we seem stuck in thinking about this as a challenge at the community, program, or agency level and not more broadly at a systems level.

Perhaps we need to expand our thinking about how to expose practitioners to other sectors of the home visiting field: research, training, administration, CQI, policy, etc. Gains could be made especially with a focus on BIPOC practitioners whose perspectives in these leadership and decision-making sectors are largely missing and yet, who are uniquely qualified to represent the perspectives of the minority families served in home visiting.

For those who have found a sense of calling in direct service with families, we have an obligation to improve the conditions that support them to stay doing what they feel called to do. At a systems level, ensuring equal access to high quality professional development that reflects the lived experience in the language of practitioners is a critical component. For those who want their experience with families to be a foundation for something next, we have an obligation to support their exploration of where in the field of home visiting they could be.

Home visitors often don’t have a seat at the table. Too often decisions are made that directly impact the work that home visitors do – without their feedback involved in the process. Engaging and authentically incorporating practitioner voice from the very beginning in decision-making processes brings critical expertise to the table.

Our Challenge to the Field:

We invite you to engage in further exploration of these issues with us and others from across the home visiting field at the upcoming virtual National Home Visiting Summit in March, 2023. The National Home Visiting Summit is a great opportunity to become personally and professionally inspired to explore who is involved and what is happening across the field of home visiting. The Summit emphasizes the importance of attracting, retaining, and advancing BIPOC representation and voice in all sectors of the field. It’s an opportunity to ask yourself what else you could do to open the ‘front door’ to a racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse, next generation of home visitors and to inspire today’s practitioners to find the place where they can make a valued contribution to the field.

Yesterday, the United States’ 117th Congress passed its end-of-year omnibus bill, which notably included reauthorization of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program. The final package includes the highest level of federal investment in and commitment to home visiting in over a decade – doubling federal investments to $800 million over five years, a doubling of the Tribal set-aside from 3% to 6%, development of new home visiting data dashboards and the continuation of virtual home visits.

This MIECHV reauthorization cycle has been a clear testament to strong bipartisan recognition that home visiting, as well as other early childhood programs, are focal priority areas for families and the early childhood workforce. Start Early is especially proud of the strong showing of support from the Congressional delegations in our home states of Washington and Illinois. We are particularly grateful to Illinois Representative Danny K. Davis (D-IL7) for serving as a true home visiting champion and the original co-sponsor of the House of Representatives’ MIECHV reauthorization bill.

An estimated 140,000 families across the United States partner with home visitors each year to enhance parent-child relationships and improve physical health, mental health, learning and safety outcomes. With this five-year reauthorization and expanded funding levels, MIECHV-funded programs will have increased stability and resources to enhance existing services, reach new constituents, increase compensation for home visitors and continue to evaluate their impact on children and families.

Start Early is deeply proud and thankful to be a member of the National Home Visiting Coalition Steering Committee and for the Committee members’ partnership in advancing this critical funding source in Congress over the last several months. We join other Coalition members in thanking Congress and recommitting ourselves to partnering with the Department of Health and Human Services in support of MIECHV implementation in states and communities across the country.

In addition to reauthorizing and expanding MIECHV, the final package includes funding for a wide array of family-facing programs, including:

• The Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG), funded at $8,021,387,000 (a 30.1% increase over the FY 2022 level)
• The Preschool Development Grant (PDG), funded at $315,000,000 (a $25,000,000 increase over the FY 2022 level)
• The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), funded at $420,000,000 for Part B (an increase of $10,451,000 over the FY 2022 level), $540,000,000 for Part C grants for infants and toddlers (an increase of $43,694,000 over the FY 2022 level), and $14.19 billion grants to states (an increase of $850,000,000 over FY 2022 level)
• Head Start, funded at $11,996,820,000 (an increase of $960,000,000 over the FY 2022 level)
• The National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative, funded at $93,900,000 (an increase at $12,000,000 over FY 2022 level)
• Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS), funded at $75,000,000 (an increase of $10 million over the FY 2022 level)

These comprehensive investments align closely with Start Early’s long-held belief that we must strengthen and expand the many, intersecting systems that serve children and families to create a continuum of support that meets their diverse needs. The suite of family-serving programs supported by Congress in their year-end spending bill supports the mental, physical and economic needs of caregivers and the early childhood workforce.

While we celebrate these major wins for children and families, we recommit ourselves in the new, 118th Congress to advocate for early childhood supports that were not included in the omnibus. The Child Tax Credit and Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) are critical supports for families with low incomes, and Start Early is disappointed that these programs were not included in Congress’s year-end package. We call on the new Congress to partner with the early childhood field to extend and expand these critical programs in line with the new, approved investments and prioritize the health and success of children, families and the early childhood workforce.

Ahead of Illinois’ midterm and gubernatorial elections next month, in a recent survey, voters across the state made it clear that they want to see increased attention towards early childhood services. In fact, the vast majority of survey respondents believe that investing in early childhood education and care is a good use of taxpayer dollars – and most would even be willing to pay more in taxes to fund it.

Start Early conducted this latest survey on behalf of state advocates to measure the level of support for early education among voters. The results were unequivocal – Illinois voters value early childhood education and care and want to see government action.

Eight in 10 voters say investing in early childhood education and care is a good use of taxpayer dollars. Among key groups like Black voters (55%) and those in Chicago’s suburbs (53%), a majority believe it to be a very good use of tax dollars. A majority of voters (56%), including nearly 75% of Black voters, went even further to say they are willing to pay a little more in taxes if it meant the state had better services for families with young children.

While partisanship continues to divide voters in many other policy areas, the survey’s findings also demonstrated that the early childhood education and care discussion goes far beyond political lines: 90% of Democrats, 73% of Independents and 70% of Republicans support government action and investment in early childhood programs and services.

Home to approximately 800,000 children under age 5, Illinois has a prominent history of investing in early care and education, spanning four decades under leadership of both Republican and Democratic state administrations. As the state prepares for its midterm elections, most timely is the survey’s bipartisan finding that most voters (70%) would feel more favorably towards a candidate who prioritizes an increase in funding for early childhood services.

“While Illinois has long been at the forefront of early learning and care innovations and investments, our system, like that of most states, has its challenges and real shortcomings,” Start Early Vice President of Illinois Policy Ireta Gasner says. “Without decisive action by our elected Governor and state legislators, critical components of the system will collapse – leaving countless young children and those who care for them behind.”

Decades of research have proven that quality early childhood programs can help break the cycle of poverty for generations to come and can change the trajectory of a child’s life toward healthy development and success. Yet, families – particularly those in communities left under-served – continue to face impossible challenges in accessing such early learning experiences.

As Illinois works to mitigate these challenges, often brought on by systematic inequities, voters reported that funding services for children experiencing homelessness and for children with disabilities or developmental delays should be priority focus areas of the state. Voters also ranked early childhood services as the second most important way to address the root causes of crime, a traumatic reality for far too many young children.

Start Early and its advocate partners across the state are passionately working to advance transformational change of the early childhood system in order to reach families and those who provide early learning services. This powerful survey data reaffirms that Illinois voters share advocates’ desires, and offers policymakers a renewed opportunity this upcoming legislative session to redouble efforts to make early learning a reality for all young children.

Conducted in partnership with Global Strategy Group, the survey of 609 registered voters in Illinois took place between September 8 – 12, 2022, and an intentional focus was placed on ensuring diverse demographic and geographic representation among voters. Interviews were conducted over the phone and text to web.

Each year the Illinois General Assembly passes legislation that can have an impact on families, or the organizations in our communities providing early childhood or related supportive services to families. Start Early leads on some of these legislative changes, often in coalition with others, and in other cases we contribute our early childhood lens and expertise to support the efforts of another lead organization. The 2022 Legislative Summary provides a listing of those bills that became law in the spring 2022 session that we thought would be relevant to families with young children and the field.  We hope that this is a resource you will download and share with colleagues and families alike. We are happy to provide additional information about any of these initiatives or connect you with other advocates where needed. Initiatives that were led by Start Early are marked “*”. 

The 2022 Illinois Policy Accomplishments report details progress we helped the state achieve toward advancing our Illinois Policy Agenda. In some places, Start Early may have led a charge, in other places we contributed research and advocacy to help advance shared goals of many stakeholders. While many challenges remain to be solved in our fragmented early learning system, this year’s report details the many ways that tangible progress is being made to improve the experience of families and children and providers.

In Illinois, Start Early engages on a variety of topics of importance to the well-being of expecting families, infants, toddlers, their families and professionals who support their healthy development.

Advocating with state agencies, elected officials, and working in partnership with providers, fellow advocates and parents, we work to advance our Illinois Policy Agenda. Work is currently underway for a refresh of our policy agenda to reflect our priorities for the next four years. More updates to come on this exciting work underway at Start Early.

We are excited to publish and offer two new resources relating to policy changes and progress toward longer-term changes that were achieved in Fiscal Year 22.