Plenary & Impact Spotlight Sessions at the National Home Visiting Summit

Tues, Sept. 29 – 9:00-10:15am ET

Learning Objectives

• To demonstrate an understanding of B’more for Healthy Babies’ community centered, multi-system, and data-driven approach to care coordination
• To describe how BHB uses home visiting as a key component of the City-wide initiative to improve population health outcomes for babies and families

Description

B’more for Healthy Babies (BHB) is a collective, long-term effort to support the health and well-being of Baltimore City’s young children and their families. The Baltimore City Health Department leads the initiative, with support from Family League of Baltimore and HealthCare Access Maryland. BHB brings together communities, organizations, and resources so that every baby might have the best start possible.  Together, partners have leveraged the strengths and inputs from community residents across the city along with data-driven decision making and tailored communication to reduce infant mortality rates, including sleep-related deaths, and narrowing birth disparities between Black and white babies. Home visiting and care coordination have been critical components of this city-wide collective impact effort, meeting families where they are and incorporating their experiences into public health systems change. These programs provide critical support for families and are adaptable to addressing the unique needs of Baltimore, like delivering information about safe sleep.

Moderated by Rebecca Dineen, (Assistant Commissioner, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Baltimore City Health Department), this plenary session will feature a panel discussion with Donnica Fife-Stallworth (MCH System Development and Initiatives, BCHD), Kimberly Lyles (Vice President, Population Health, HealthCare Access Maryland), and Melissa Moore (Senior Director of Community Impact, Family League of Baltimore) who will discuss how B’more for Healthy Babies wove together maternal and child health systems with place-based approaches and partnership with residents to design actionable solutions, implemented city-wide. Attendees will learn about how to take these examples of system coordination across a complex, large city to their own communities and contexts.

Weds, Sept. 30 – 2:15-3:30pm ET

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the National Strategy for the Home Visiting Workforce, including its three strategic pillars and the history of and impacts of these pillars on the field
• To learn how states and communities are successfully advancing initiatives in support of the home visiting workforce
• To engage in a call to action to support policies and practices promoting workforce recruitment, retention, and well-being from your respective role in the field

Description

Home visiting is skilled, relational, emotionally demanding, and deeply human work. And for too long, the systems surrounding it have not always reflected the full weight and worth of what this workforce carries. This interactive plenary session will introduce the vision for a national strategy for the home visiting workforce—a long-term, field-informed road map designed to strengthen systems to better support and sustain the people who make home visiting possible. Developed with input from home visitors, supervisors, and program leaders across the country, the national strategy focuses on three interconnected priorities: Creating clear and supported pathways into home visiting careers; strengthening the conditions that allow high-quality practice to thrive; and centering workforce well-being as essential to effective services.

If you are interested in influencing workforce compensation, recruitment and retention, professional growth and well-being, and honoring the experience of the workforce and families served, join us on a national movement that increases opportunities, pathways, and well-being for the home visiting workforce. Attendees will hear national, state, and community perspectives and will have an opportunity to engage with the session speakers and content

Tues, Sept. 29 – 4:00-5:15pm ET

Learning Objectives

• To build awareness of the idea of a home visiting model enhancement, what they are, how they are built and the roles of models and enhancements developers.
• To understand how system enhancements can be utilized across home visiting models to support and sustain the workforce and contribute to healthier families and expanded parent engagement.
• To identify enhancements and then implement them across a home visiting system.
• To use the home visiting cost model to analyze the costs of adding enhancements to their systems and identify how enhancements can fit within cost structures and with potential funding sources.

Description

This session will provide a rich, multi-pronged perspective on how state and local home visiting systems can embed home visiting service enhancements to strengthen supports for families, communities, and the workforce. Enhancements are an important way for home visiting systems to enrich the supports within, and across, models in order to address needs of staff and families, including reaching families with information that might otherwise be inaccessible and supporting workforce well-being, professional development, and retention.

A panel discussion, consisting of state leaders, model developers, and national experts in home visiting cost modeling, will feature examples of model enhancements launched by home visiting models and system enhancements developed by external content developers. Panelists will discuss how enhancements are developed, implemented, and tested in partnership with communities, local program sites, and states. They will explore how states and communities identify the need for and select specific enhancements and how enhancements are then implemented to ensure all children, families, and staff have the supports needed to thrive – elevating innovative approaches and lessons learned through this process. Panelists will also discuss how to understand the costs of initiating and sustaining enhancements at both the program and system levels. Attendees will leave the session with concrete examples of how enhancements can work across home visiting models and/or program sites at the state and local level, and how home visiting service enhancements can support system level work benefitting both staff and families.

Tues, Sept. 29 – 4:00-5:15pm ET

Learning Objectives

• To identify key evolutionary moments in home visiting across research, policy, and practice that came about because of a multitude of voices, perspectives, and actions.
• To describe what is meant by “a tapestry of voices” and how the inclusion of different, distinct, and sometimes contrasting perspectives can be instrumental in driving transformational shifts.
• To formulate at least one action you can take to elevate a tapestry of voices in your own work

Description

The National Home Visiting Network was established in 2018 to strengthen connections across the home visiting field and advance the reach, quality, and impact of home visiting for families with young children. Guided by an Advisory Committee representing research, policy, practice, and parent leadership, the Network has created space for meaningful dialogue, shared learning, and collective action across sectors. By intentionally elevating a tapestry of voices—particularly the voices of families and those with lived experience—the Network has fostered critical conversations that challenge assumptions, surface emerging opportunities, and generate insights that inform stronger policies, more responsive practices, and more effective systems of support for young children and their families.

This session will explore some of the defining evolutionary moments in home visiting—examining where the field has been, where it stands today, and where it may be headed next across research, policy, and practice. At the heart of this conversation is the power of a tapestry of voices. We will highlight how progress in home visiting has not been driven by models, legislation, or evidence alone, but by the voices of practitioners, researchers, advocates, and—most importantly—families and individuals with lived experience. Their insights, leadership, and willingness to challenge existing assumptions have been essential in driving transformational change, reshaping priorities, and creating the seismic shifts that continue to move the field toward greater equity, impact, and responsiveness. Participants will be invited to consider how these voices can continue to inform and accelerate the next chapter of home visiting.

Tues, Sept. 29 – 4:00-5:15pm ET

Description

We will be offering an Impact Spotlight elevating key advocacy issues in the early childhood and home visiting field. Check back in mid-June for more information!