Service Coordination in Home Visiting:
A Toolkit for Practice and Research
The project goal is to advance the building of early childhood systems of care for vulnerable families by strengthening the role of home visiting in coordinating health and human services. This toolkit was developed as part of a national, multi sector project to: establish a coordination framework and set of indicators; describe state and local-level variation in home visiting coordination capacity and practice; and promote use of our project findings in policy and practice.
Purpose of the Toolkit: The purpose of the toolkit is to promote stakeholders’ use of evidence to strengthen coordination. The project aligns with HARC’s efforts to promote coordination as a core element of home visiting and an essential component of early childhood systems.
Content of the Toolkit: The toolkit includes a framework and set of indicators for coordination; a self-assessment tool; results of state and local program surveys; and four case studies.
Our Guiding Principles
The framework strives to be:
Family Centered
Families’ strengths, needs, and preferences drive
service planning and decision making.
Equitable
Home visiting programs, along with other providers, reduce barriers and facilitate access to services for all families in need so that they can reach their full potential.
Adaptable
Providers, organizations, and systems are prepared to meet the changing needs of families, communities, and society.
Interdisciplinary and Cross-Sector
Providers, organizations, and systems acknowledge, learn from, and leverage the strengths of varied service sectors.
Focused on Population Health
The early childhood system emphasizes promotion, prevention, early identification, and timely response to identified family and community needs.
Early Childhood Home Visiting
Early childhood home visiting is a voluntary service delivery strategy that aims to address a broad range of needs among expectant and new parents. Home visiting programs intend to promote positive outcomes for parents and children across multiple domains such as child and parent health, child development and school readiness, positive parenting, and family economic self-sufficiency. Home visiting programs accomplish these aims through a combination of direct services, such as education and family support, and referral and coordination with needed community resources.
For more detailed information about early childhood home visiting, see the National Home Visiting Resource Center 2017 Home Visiting Yearbook
Suggested citation: West A, Gruss K, Correll L, Duggan AK, Minkovitz CS. Service Coordination in Home Visiting: A Toolkit for Practice and Research. Home Visiting Applied Research Collaborative. 2018. https://hvharc.org/service-coordination-toolkit/.