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The National Home Visiting Summit: A Three-Day Event with Lasting Impact 

In this blog post, Start Early Senior Technical Assistance & Training Specialist, Jesslyn Jobe, shares her perspective on why the National Home Visiting Summit creates key opportunities for learning and connection.

Jesslyn Jobe November 1, 2024
  • Professional Development
  • Blog

As our team plans for the 2025 National Home Visiting Summit set for February 12-14, 2025 in Washington, D.C., we’re inspired by the lasting impact of what attendees across the home visiting field learn and take back home each year to support systems change across programs, research, and policy.

The plenary sessions, workshops, and poster presentations at the Summit create opportunities for learning and connection. They also spark many attendees to share key takeaways and describe actionable steps to use their learning to transform home visiting at a systemic level from where they are in the field. For me, the Summit offers an opportunity to see the work I do in home visiting in Illinois as part of a wider system supporting families. The Summit enables me to bring home innovative ideas to support the field in my role providing training and technical assistance. My team and I have observed that other attendees at the Summit also share the inspiration and call to action I receive at the Summit.

Register Now

Registration is now open for the 2025 National Home Visiting Summit. We hope to meet you there and learn how you’re “taking the Summit home” to advance home visiting. 

Register Here

Here are some perspectives from other 2024 Summit attendees that stood out to my team and me:

Feeling Seen and Valued by Summit content
Direct service providers shared:

I felt a huge takeaway from this year’s Summit is the redefinition of the word ‘professional’ in relation to home visiting. We’ve always acknowledged that families are their children’s first (and best) teachers, but at the same time we’ve not necessarily appreciated or translated that into the professional domain. 

“Aha” Moments
 Funders, systems change leaders and researchers remarked:

I really liked learning how others conceptualize home visit quality and how it should be understood in context based on community and family needs.  

It is possible to offer flexibility and adaptability to the program, to services for families that can lead to and or be sustainable, especially for retention of the workforce and families.  

Plans to “Take it Back Home”
Systems leaders in all capacities, from parents and providers to funders and researchers made plans to act based on Summit learning and connections:

I plan to take away the resources provided for funding. I will also work to improve staff satisfaction. 

 I will also be using the tool to disaggregate data to deepen my understanding of the story data is telling.  

The Summit got me thinking about our data collection and how we might be able to restructure the collection and/or analyses with more of an equity lens.  

Info on practical in-community advocacy workforce well-being considerations are things I will be applying to my work immediately. 

About the Author

headshot of Jesslyn Jobe

Jesslyn Jobe

Sr. Technical Assistance and Training Specialist

Jesslyn Jobe is a Sr. Technical Assistance and Training Specialist here at Start Early with over 15 years of experience in healthy families programs in Illinois.

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