Parent-Child Home Program: Unique Service Delivery for Getting Black and Latino Children Ready for Success

• In Event: Closing the School Readiness Gap for Black and Latino Children: Start Early and at Home

Abstract

Objective
Low-income children, especially those from racially/ethnically diverse groups, arrive at pre-school with limited school readiness competencies. One way to ameliorate the effects of growing up poor on early cognitive and social-emotional skills is to provide families with high-quality early childhood interventions. Home visitation programs offer a unique way to provide such services. However, there is limited “gold-standard” evidence demonstrating that home visitation programs improve the skills that poor, urban, Black and Latino children need to be successful learners in early childhood settings. The proposed paper will present evidence from three RCTs of the Parent-Child Home Program (PCHP).

Theoretical Framework

Poverty in the US has become more concentrated in urban communities, with ethnic minorities being the majority of individuals residing in these areas. Families and young children in low-income, urban communities, primarily Latinos and Blacks, are faced with unique challenges, such as concentrated, multi-generational poverty, violence and joblessness. Due to these living conditions, young children may have reduced access to resources, which prevent experiences for children to play, grow and learn. School readiness skills for low-income children (e.g., language) consistently fall below those of middle-income children, with the gap emerging as early as kindergarten. The value of home-based interventions is supported by research that shows that the home environment matters, including how parents support their children’s learning. By supporting the positive interactions between parent-child dyads, as well as providing developmentally appropriate materials (e.g. books/toys), we move towards reducing the school readiness gap between children in advantaged and disadvantaged households.

Methods/Data

Three randomized control trial evaluations of PCHP were conducted in NYC. These studies adhere to a longitudinal, randomized intervention/control group design, with assessments of children and parents at the outset of the program and after two-years of program participation. Data were collected from studies one (n = 236), two (n = 166), and three (n=100) from parent-child dyads in the home. Demographic, parent report of child’s social-emotional well-being, direct assessment of executive function and language competency were collected.

Results

Regression analysis findings across three RCTs highlight significant impacts for children’s language (see Tables 2,3,5,6). Additional social-emotional well-being impacts were found for study two children (see Table 5). Sample characteristics are provided in Tables 1,4,7. Results suggest that PCHP is effective in improving children’s language and social emotional development with diverse samples of children at the completion of the program.

Significance

These RCT evaluations were among the first to evaluate a school readiness home visitation program’s efficacy in an urban context with diverse immigrant families. By 2018 less than half of children in the US will be White. Under the Affordable Care Act, the MIECHV program funded for five years at $1.5 billion through 2015; the goal for MIECHV funding is to improve outcomes for at-risk children through evidence-based home visitation programs. Thus, it is urgent for researchers and policymakers to identify what programs work with diverse families. These findings make an important contribution to our understanding of what programs work best to support school readiness skills with ethnically/racially diverse children.

Authors

• Cristina M. Medellin, New York University

• Jennifer Astuto, New York University