Poster #95 - Family Wellbeing and Use of Government Supports for Home Visiting Families Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in early 2020 created unprecedented changes and disruptions to the daily lives of families. In response to the economic toll of COVID-19 on families, the federal government passed two stimulus bills, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) in March 2020 and the American Rescue Plan of 2021 (ARPA) in March of 2021, offering financial assistance to families through supports such as direct cash payments, refundable tax credits, and eviction moratoriums, aimed at reducing the impact of COVID-19 on US families.

State agencies also responded to the economic and material needs of families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the Prevention and Early Intervention Division of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (PEI) responded to families’ immense challenges by providing concrete support for families’ basic needs above and beyond home visiting (HV) programs’ pre-pandemic core services. Texas currently offers multiple evidence-based HV programs that serve approximately 16,000 families annually (National Home Visiting Resource Center, 2019). HV programs provide expectant parents and parents of young children with in-home parenting support, information, and connections to additional services (Wilson et al., 2020). HV funding in Texas comes through a combination of federal funds, including Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), as well as state general revenue funds (Associate of State and Territorial Health Officials, 2018). During the COVID-19 pandemic, PEI: shifted its HV program exclusively to a virtual service delivery model (Osborne, Gibson, Huffman, 2020), provided greater flexibility to HV programs, and reallocated and invested new dollars in novel ways to support and meet participants’ basic needs.

Undoubtedly, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted families economically and psychologically. Almost two years later, what is unclear is how different families endured the pandemic. The present study presents a unique opportunity to investigate how families are faring and how supports from state and federal resources contribute to patterns of economic and family wellbeing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The study examines a) trends in which families accessed federal supports; b) trends in which families access state supports; and c) two years later, trends in wellbeing among families who did and did not access support

As part of an ongoing evaluation, we are conducting a multi-year mixed methods study on families who participate in state-funded HV prior to and after the onset of the pandemic. Our results will draw conclusions from two bodies of data: (1) HV program data collected at program enrollment, and (2) a survey administered to HV participants to assess current economic wellbeing, protective factors, risk factors, parental mental health, and federal and state resources families used. Preliminary results from the analysis of program data (N=4,899) suggest differences in family demographics and risk factors over the last two years that may relate to how families endured the pandemic.

Authors

• Monica G Navarro, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author

• Liliane Nienstedt, Vanderbilt University