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The Essentials of Home Visiting Course Catalog

Based in Start Early’s deep expertise, our self-paced courses and webinars are designed specifically for family professionals and can be accessed 24/7.

Learning Experiences

Our self-paced courses and live webinars address the most pressing needs and varied levels of experience across the field, supporting professionals achieve certification requirements of leading professional credentials and registries.

  • Self-Paced Online Courses can be completed within 2-3 hours at your own convenience. Start and stop as you wish. You will have perpetual access so you can always reference the content later.
  • Live Webinars are facilitated by home visiting and family professional experts at Start Early. Webinars include a presentation, case studies and a Q & A session. Participants will have access to the recorded sessions following the live sessions. Download the calendar with the dates and times of upcoming webinars.
  • Suggested Sequence of Learning ExperiencesDownload this resource to follow our suggested course sequence for optimal learning and practice change.

NEW! Adult Learning & Adult Literacy Webinars

Learn about the factors that affect adult learning and literacy and become more effective in collaborating and engaging with diverse families. These webinars are perfect for ALL home visiting and early childhood staff.

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Live Webinars Available in Spanish!

Attend two of our most popular Essentials of Home Visiting webinars, presented live in Spanish. Reach out to our team to learn more.

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Current Learning Catalog

Self-Paced Online Course

Children grow and change rapidly. Home visitors and family professionals can use the ASQ-3 as a tool to celebrate how each child is developing and support parents’ role in that growth. Professionals who stay on schedule for ASQ-3 screenings support a parent’s investment in their child’s future. In this course, you will learn how to administer the ASQ in partnership with a parent; score the screening; and talk with parents about potential concerns.

Self-Paced Online Course

Family professionals are committed to the best possible life for babies and their parents. During this course, you will learn how to achieve this goal and how to connect with families of all kinds. This course serves as either an introduction or a valuable refresher on fundamentals such as how to plan for home visits; set goals with families; and handle unexpected challenges.

Self-Paced Online Course

As a home visitor and family professional, building strong relationships that support each member of the family’s growth and development is essential to your job. By establishing a long-term relationship with families, you can achieve your program goals and help parents achieve the goals they set for themselves and their children. This course offers practical ways to motivate parents to stay engaged with you.

Self-Paced Online Course

Substance abuse and addiction are often prevalent, recurring issues in home visiting. Addiction can interrupt a parent’s personal growth and interfere with their ability to fully engage with their child. This course will strengthen both new and experienced family professionals’ knowledge and ability to recognize signs of substance use and explore ways to address concerns with a parent. Topics include the impact of substance use on family systems, parenting, child development and safety issues encountered in home visiting.

Self-Paced Online Course

Domestic violence is a prevalent and recurring issue in home visiting. In this course, you will learn how to address domestic violence while working with families. Topics include the impact of violence on family systems, parenting, and child development. Common scenarios and strategies are presented for talking with parents about keeping themselves and their children safe. This course supports you in developing a non-judgmental approach to working with families.

Self-Paced Online Course

Caring about the parent-child relationship is a primary purpose of home visiting with families. By using the power of observation, listening, and inquiry, you can activate a parent’s learning so they use the same strength-based skills with their child. This course covers critical issues in infant mental health, including brain development and attachment. Learn practical ways to use observation and listening to strengthen the parent-child relationship, and to incorporate reflection to help the family ‘learn together.’

Self-Paced Online Course

Home visitors and family professionals can greatly enrich a mother’s experience throughout her pregnancy, birth and first days as a new family. This training will help Home Visitors achieve their optimal goal of ensuring mothers are ready for birth and strong parent-child bonds. The course offers practical tools to use during home visits, including encouraging planning for the birth; family member involvement; and care post-birth. You will also be prompted to reflect on how your personal beliefs about parenting may influence your practice with families. The course consists of two parts and takes 5-6 hours to complete.

Self-Paced Online Course

Trauma shapes one’s view of the world and one’s interactions with others, so it affects the experience of families engaged in home visiting services. You will learn how to recognize and understand the dynamics of trauma on families in the context of the community in which they live. While the experience of trauma varies from person to person and family to family, this course helps family professionals address how trauma affects parenting, decisions related to parenting, and dynamics in the parent-child relationship.

Self-Paced Online Course

In your work as a supervisor in a home visiting setting, it is not uncommon to encounter trauma among both the staff and families involved in the program. During this course, you’ll examine what trauma is and how it impacts your work and the work of home visitors and family professionals; learn how to spot it; and explore ways to appropriately support home visitors that have been affected by it. This course also discusses the integration of reflective practice, self-awareness, and self-care in your work as a home visiting supervisor.

Self-Paced Online Course

Supervision plays a vital role in keeping home visits centered on parent-child relationships and focused on the achievement of outcomes. Home visitors and family professionals routinely work with families whose complex needs go beyond what home visits alone can address. This course offers practical strategies that both new and experienced supervisors can use to make the most of their interactions and time with home visitors. Learn best practices to ensure your team achieves success with families with your critical support as their supervisor.

Live Webinar (Available in English & Spanish)

How do our personal values and experiences impact the work we do? The qualities of being nonjudgmental, present and an active listener will be covered as well as potential barriers to active listening. This webinar complements the Basics of Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

The goal of this two-part training is to improve home visitors’ and early childhood professionals’ effectiveness in collaborating and engaging with diverse families through their use of literacy information in their work. This two-part series will engage home visiting staff, regardless of model, in identifying the complex factors that influence and affect adult literacy, including linguistic diversity, cultural values and identities, as well as individual experiences within systems. Specific strategies for supporting and engaging families with diverse literacy needs will be discussed.  This training will consist of a one-hour session on this content and will be followed by a one-hour reflective learning and application session that focuses on implementation and practice for participants. This webinar series complements the Building Engaging and Collaborative Relationships with Families self-paced course.

Part 1 must be taken before Part 2 in this two-part training:

  • Part 1: Adult literacy concepts in home visiting
  • Part 2: Additional review and practice of adult literacy concepts in home visiting

Live Webinar

The goal of this two-part training is to improve home visitors’ and early childhood professionals’ effectiveness in collaborating and engaging with diverse families through their use of adult learning information in their work. This 2-part series will engage home visiting staff, regardless of model, in identifying the unique learning styles of families, as well as the complex factors that influence and affect learning, so they can effectively collaborate with families. Specific strategies for supporting and engaging families with diverse learning needs will be discussed. This training will consist of a one-hour session on this content and will be followed by a one-hour reflective learning and application session that focuses on implementation and practice for participants. This webinar series complements the Building Engaging and Collaborative Relationships with Families self-paced course.

Part 1 must be taken before Part 2 in this two-part training:

  • Part 1: Adult learning concepts in home visiting
  • Part 2: Additional review and practice of adult learning concepts in home visiting

Live Webinar

This webinar will explore the values and beliefs that contribute to child-rearing and parenting that require sensitive exploration and genuine respect when the culture of the family differs from the culture of the home visitor. The majority of these values and beliefs are below the surface of what is seen, felt, and heard by the home visitor. By having an awareness and consideration of these values and beliefs, home visitors can support families in increasing the benefits families receive from home visits. This webinar complements the Building Engaging and Collaborative Relationships with Families self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a home visitor or family professional, how can you support families impacted by domestic violence to develop a safety plan? This webinar discusses developing a working knowledge of community resources and collaborating with formal and informal institutions to support families using a strength-based, family-centered approach. This webinar complements the Domestic Violence in Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar (Available in English & Spanish)

We bring our personal and professional beliefs about parenting to work with us. This webinar covers how to acknowledge and monitor those beliefs and address how they may impact the work we do as family professionals. This webinar complements the Foundations of Infant Mental Health Practice in Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a family professional, how can you help families understand child growth, child development, and how parenting techniques may impact their child’s development? This webinar focuses on risk factors, family patterns, and cultural beliefs related to domestic violence. This webinar complements the Domestic Violence in Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a supervisor, there are many tools that you can leverage to operate your home visiting programs, enhance the quality of services delivered to children and families, and improve outcomes for those served. However, it can be difficult to identify and implement these tools while still focusing on your day-to-day operational tasks. In this webinar, we will explore how a supervisor can collect and use data to assess and improve the quality of their home visiting program. This webinar complements the Supervising Home Visitors self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a home visitor or family professional, how does setting and maintaining boundaries with the families you support enhance your work with them? In this webinar, we will discuss various situations that call for establishing boundaries, strategies for establishing supportive boundaries with families, and the role of reflective supervision in setting and maintaining boundaries. This webinar complements the Basics of Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

What measures should you take to ensure your personal safety in your work with families? This webinar explores the importance of home visitor safety, how to identify safety risk factors, and appropriate actions to take based on various risk factors. This webinar complements the Basics of Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a supervisor, how can you help family professionals set and maintain boundaries with the families they serve? The discussion will cover self-awareness, challenges family professionals face, and how to support staff. This webinar complements the Supervising Home Visitors self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a family professional, it can be challenging to align available resources to the needs of families. This webinar explores how to carry out your role and feel confident in connecting families to community resources and supports when the need arises. This webinar complements the Foundations of Infant Mental Health Practice in Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

This webinar will describe a process for observing the interactions between the parent and the child that provides clues into the type and quality of dyadic relationship that exists. By using a process that allows for more awareness of perception, home visitors can strategize how to best approach the work of enhancing and supporting the parent-child relationship and the quality of attachment which is vital for healthy child development. This webinar complements the following webinars: Being Present with Families and Exploring Values and Beliefs Around Parenting. This webinar also complements the Building Engaging and Collaborative Relationships with Families self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a family professional, how do you engage with families around the topic of substance abuse? This webinar explores strength-based strategies and conversation starters you can incorporate into your work with parents to successfully engage families around the issues of substance abuse and support the growth and development of their children. This webinar complements the Challenges in Home Visiting: Substance Abuse self-paced course.

Live Webinar

Reflective practice is essential to providing high-quality home visiting services and engaging with families. The utilization of motivational interviewing can greatly enhance the effectiveness of services and improve relationships with families. Motivational interviewing is a collaborative, person-centered form of guiding to elicit and strengthen motivation for change. This webinar identifies the fundamental elements of motivational interviewing and explores strategies for using it in home visiting. This webinar complements the Basics of Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

The reflective supervision model offers supervisors and staff an opportunity to engage in a collaborative process that involves shared power, clear mutual expectations, and free-flowing communication. This webinar examines the reflective supervision model as a process between the supervisor and staff member that differs from administrative supervision. Administrative supervision is about “the work you do,” and reflective supervision is about “what the work is doing to you.” As a result of this webinar, you will be more prepared and confident when participating in reflective supervision with your staff. This webinar complements the Supervising Home Visitors and Impact of Trauma in Supervising Home Visitors self-paced courses.

Live Webinar

As a supervisor, how can you support your staff and yourself in an intentional and trauma-informed manner? This webinar discusses the impact of trauma on multiple constituents – children, families, home visitors, supervisors and communities. We also identify common supervisory pitfalls as well as support strategies designed to improve the outcomes of each scenario. This webinar complements the Impact of Trauma in Supervising Home Visitors self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a family professional, how can you support yourself and the families you work with in an intentional and trauma-informed manner? This webinar identifies common missteps in working with families impacted by trauma. We will examine different strategies you can employ to support your families who are experiencing trauma. This webinar complements the Impact of Trauma in Home Visiting self-paced course.

Live Webinar

As a family professional, how do you intentionally respond to situations where substance abuse is present? This webinar discusses ways to recognize a family’s values and strengths to help guide your approach when working with a family impacted by substance abuse. We will also explore how substance abuse affects family dynamics. This webinar complements the Challenges in Home Visiting: Substance Abuse self-paced course.