Poster #166 - The Early Childhood Home Visiting Workforce: Findings from a New National Study

• In Event: 3-159 - Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Section - Prevention and Interventions

Integrative Statement

A growing body of evidence points to the long-term positive impacts of evidence-based home visiting programs on children and their families (Michalopoulos et al. 2017), yet little research is available on the home visiting staff that deliver these interventions or on the professional development systems that support them. Home visitors come from a variety of backgrounds including nursing, professional counseling, social work, and sociology. Some home visitors have worked directly with families in the past, while others enter the field with no specific experience or training. As the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program continues to support home visiting across the country, more information is needed to understand the home visiting workforce and how to recruit, train, and retain qualified staff.

Training and professional development are critical in encouraging model fidelity to systematically achieve targeted outcomes of evidence-based programs. These opportunities may encourage well-trained home visitors and supervisors to remain in their roles over time, avoid burnout and build employee confidence, all of which benefits both families and home visiting agencies. Similarly, home visiting supervisors need training so that they can effectively manage staff and operate programs.

The proposed poster presentation will share new findings from a national study of the home visiting workforce. The project includes multiple components: (1) a survey of program managers across all 700 local implementing agencies (LIAs) receiving MIECHV funding; (2) a national survey of the home visiting workforce in participating LIAs (N=3,000 home visitors and supervisors); and (3) case studies of 40 LIAs in eight states involving semistructured interviews with program leaders and supervisory staff (N=80), as well as focus groups with home visitors (N=480). Case study sites are diverse in terms of geography, home visiting model, demographics of program participants, and local community characteristics (e.g., poverty, unemployment, availability of services). Together, these research approaches will address critical research questions, including:
1. What are the characteristics of home visitors and their supervisors, including their demographics, qualifications, and employment history?
2. What are the characteristics of home visiting jobs (e.g., schedules, compensation, benefits)?
3. What are the career pathways of home visitors and supervisors?
4. What factors contribute to the recruitment, retention, and turnover of home visitors?
5. What strategies do programs use to recruit and retain staff? What competencies are they looking for? What positions are challenging to fill, and why?
6. What training needs does the workforce perceive?

Data collection will conclude in fall 2018 and findings will be available in early 2019 in time for the March biennial meeting. We will use Stata to clean and analyze survey data and construct survey weights to adjust for nonresponse. We will code and analyze interview and focus group transcripts with NVivo software to identify key themes. The poster will provide descriptive information on the characteristics of the workforce, disaggregated by home visiting model, and key survey findings, such as factors leading to turnover and professional development needs. Supporting quotes and themes from focus groups and key informant interviews will be highlighted.

Authors

• Heather Sandstrom, Urban Institute
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Benatar, Urban Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebecca Peters, Urban Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shirley Adelstein, Urban Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Devon Genua, Urban Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Timothy Triplett, Urban Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yuju Park, Urban Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Amelia Coffey, Urban Institute
  Non-Presenting Author