Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to join advocates, home visitors, program leaders, public sector leaders, funders, and researchers at the 2025 National Home Visiting Summit in D.C. I was inspired by the diverse, cross-disciplinary group who shared ideas, built community, and learned and reflected with each other on how we can continue to build high-quality home visiting services, structures, and systems.
In those discussions, I heard several themes around how state and local public sector leaders and advocates can continue to strengthen home visiting systems to better serve children and families.
- Address workforce challenges by working across sectors and agencies. While policymakers often discuss workforce shortages at a system level, programs still often feel that they must generate the solutions on their own. Speakers at the Summit offered many potential solutions to address workforce challenges in effective, cross-sector ways. For example, state MIECHV administrators are partnering with Early Intervention/Part C coordinators to build relationships and workforce capabilities through shared professional development. Deploying the same professional development to build reflective supervision capacity across an entire state can benefit not only home visitors, but Early Interventionists, early educators, and others. In addition, counties are collaborating regionally to provide mental health supports for home visitors across models.
- Leverage diverse funding streams to support home visiting. As states seek to expand home visiting services and build more comprehensive, coordinated systems to support children and families, they need new strategies to increase funding and support sustainability. In addition to the two sources traditionally used to fund home visiting – MIECHV and Early Head Start – state systems leaders are leveraging other funding streams, including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Title I of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5), Medicaid, and private insurance. In Oregon, state system leaders are using a combination of state general funds, Medicaid, and private health insurance to fund Family Connects statewide (Universal Newborn Support Services or UNSS). Also, in Colorado, the Tri-County Health Department (TCHD) leverages TANF funds to support home visiting services through their Nurse Support Program and Brief Parenting Program.
- Center the voices of families and providers for a demonstrated positive impact in systems building. State and local system leaders are challenging old mindsets and creating new infrastructure to place families and home visiting professionals at the center of decision-making in policy, practice, and research. When they do so, they find that the insights, suggestions, and buy-in generated helps drive strong outcomes for children and families. For example, state leaders scaling Family Connects (a universal postpartum short term home visiting approach) in New Jersey surveyed nurses to determine what makes the nurse home visiting role particularly attractive. Based on the results of that survey, they have built new supports and features in competitive requests for proposals and partnered with nursing schools to offer service-commitment scholarships. Additionally, the Seeds of Success program in Washington includes parents as board members and partnered with them to design a more collaborative approach to trauma-informed home visiting services.
