Indicator 57: Newborns Receiving Home Visits

 

Why This Is Important

It is widely recognized that prenatal and post-natal types of care are vitally important for
the early development of children. Families who arrange for their newborn to receive home
visits by professional caregivers are actively helping to create a healthy life for themselves
and their child.

Home visiting programs have been shown to strengthen families and reduce the risk factors
that contribute to a child abuse and neglect. Participating in such programs augments
parenting skills, helps to correct unreasonable parental expectations of children, helps to
remedy parental isolation, and boosts parental resources.

 

Where We Stand

Maine has a number of home visiting programs at the state and local level. There is currently
no single, reliable statewide count of all the newborns or families that receive a home visit.
However, data does exist for three of the major home visiting programs: Healthy Families,
Parents as Teachers, and Parents Are Teachers, Too. These programs, provided by 14
nonprofit organizations under State contract, offer home visits, group activities such as
playgroups and “Boot Camp for Dads,” and materials on age-appropriate child growth and development.

These 14 programs helped to strengthen 4,216 families in fiscal year 2005. This is almost
doubled the number of families served the previous year (2263). Of agencies reporting time
of enrollment, 33% of the families served were enrolled in the prenatal period. This is an
increase over prior years and is important because it enabled early identification of risk
factors that might affect those children and expanded opportunities to reduce those factors
during the pregnancy.

Nearly all the programs primary caregivers are female. Forty-one percent of the mothers
involved gave birth to their child between the ages of 18 and 22. Thirty-nine percent of these caregivers have a high school diploma and 26% of them have a household income of less
than $10,000.

For those families who were active during the year and were served for at least six months,
positive changes in behavior were observed. For example, among those primary caregivers
who reported themselves as smokers at enrollment, 6% ceased smoking altogether and 5%
reported having reduced the level of their smoking. Even a larger percentage reported
progress in reducing their children's exposure to second hand smoke. Almost one quarter
of the parents for whom this was a concern at the time of enrollment, reported that their
children are no longer exposed to second hand smoke.

It is worth while to note that the southern area of York County and eastern portions of
Cumberland County are not served by a home visiting program due to a lack of funds and
for limited service area. While this geographic area is small, these locations are among those
which are the most densely populated in the state, representing 11% of the state's total
population.

Data Sources and Context

Data for the above home visiting programs comes from the Maine Center for Disease
Control and Prevention, Healthy Families Program. Some 2005 data for these programs 
was developed as part of a five-year evaluation of these programs conducted by
Hornby-Zeller Associates, Inc.