February 2010Vol. 11, No. 1Home Visiting for Kinship and Other Caregivers
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) recently released a report analyzing how home visiting services (e.g., child assessments, parent education) can be best used by, and expanded to, families providing kinship care and/or family, friend, and neighbor (FFN) care.
CLASP researchers interviewed representatives from six major national models of home visiting, as well as stakeholders and experts in the field at the community, State, and national levels. The report gives extensive overviews and examples of how the reviewed home visiting programs incorporate kinship and FFN care situations into their models. A summary of these reviews indicates that most home visiting models operate on the notion that including kinship and FFN caregivers as part of their target population allows the programs to serve more vulnerable children. However, there are a number of considerations and adaptations that may need to be made to optimize home visiting for these populations.
The report spotlights four programs that have been developed especially for these populations:
- The Florida Kinship Center developed the Kin as Teachers program to provide support and information on raising children to kinship caregivers caring for children from birth through kindergarten.
- Begun in Massachusetts, the Parent-Child Home Program for Family Child Care Providers serves licensed family child care providers and family, friends, and neighbors who provide regular child care. Caregivers receive visits twice a week from home visitors who model interactions around reading, play, and conversation.
- Family Child Care Satellites of Greater Rochester (New York) makes twice-monthly visits to caregivers using the curriculum adapted by Parents as Teachers specifically for caregivers titled "Supporting Care Providers Through Personal Visits."
- Selected Early Head Start (EHS) sites participated in the Enhanced Home Visiting Pilot Project in which children in home-based EHS also received home visits with their FFN caregiver.
The full report, Extending Home Visiting to Kinship Caregivers and Family, Friend, and Neighbor Caregivers, by Elizabeth Hoffmann and Tiffany Conway Perrin, is available on the CLASP website:
www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications/files/homevisitingkinshipffn.pdf (967 KB)