Congress can work together, reauthorize successful children’s home visit health program

A supermajority of Americans want Congress to work together with bipartisan collaboration to address issues that matter.

Before they adjourn this year, Congress has the opportunity to come together to pass a bill that will benefit millions of mothers and their children.

In late September, the House Ways and Means Committee gave unanimous, bipartisan approval to reauthorize the Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting program. Up and down the dais, members sang the praises of the program — and the painstaking work of negotiating bill language.

“Home visiting is a powerful, proven tool that helps young children and families thrive,” said Ways and Means Worker and Family Support Subcommittee Chairperson Danny Davis, D-Illinois. “For decades, I’ve made it a top policy priority to bring this life-transforming program to all who need it.”

“I am proud to join Chairman Neal in dedicating this bill to the late Republican leader on the Worker and Family Support, our dear friend Rep. Jackie Walorski,” said Ways and Means Committee ranking member Kevin Brady, R-Texas. “This bipartisan bill wouldn’t be possible without her tremendous work finding common ground for a five-year reauthorization, increasing transparency about outcomes, and her deep commitment to helping vulnerable children and families.”

The Home Visiting program supports evidence-based early childhood home visiting in every state, territory and many tribal communities. Over the past decade, the program has strengthened millions of under-resourced pregnant mothers and families with young children. It has helped to increase healthy births, reduce maternal morbidity, enhance child development, increase family well-being, reduce parenting stress and enable parents to find housing, get a job or go back to school.

The program has maintained bipartisan support because it works: Decades of evidence validate its success.

Parents as Teachers is one of 19 evidence-based models recognized by the Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness clearinghouse. Parents as Teachers has been shown to improve parenting knowledge and behaviors, detect developmental delays and health concerns, prevent child abuse and neglect, increase school readiness, improve family economic well-being and improve parent, child and family health. In fact, outcome studies show that the Parents as Teachers home visiting model significantly reduces the risk of child abuse and neglect, in large part by promoting parental resilience and strengthening what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls protective factors.

Many of Parents as Teachers home visits serve families in harder-to-reach rural, tribal and frontier areas and small towns, in addition to cities and suburbs. Parents as Teachers reaches families at higher risk of engaging with the child welfare system, providing an essential service to parents of very young kids: a friendly, reassuring connection to a trained partner who listens without judgment and offers practical, well-researched guidance. Parents as Teachers parent educators also provide advice and trusted information on how to access critical medical, nutritional and other resources as well as connections to other parents. Last year alone, Parents as Teachers facilitated 50,000 parent group events, helping build social capital and support networks in their communities.

The reauthorization bill is named after the late U.S. Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Indiana, who helped negotiate the compromise. It will respond to the changing needs of families and the home visiting field.

After a decade of flat funding, sequestration and inflation, the bill extends and grows the program over five years, doubles the set-aside for tribal programs, and allows for the continuation of virtual service delivery as appropriate and agreed to by families. The new federal support will assure home visitor salaries support staff retention and increase the number of families served.

If there was ever a time that parents needed support and a safety net, it’s now. With the increase in the number of families living in poverty due to far-reaching effects of the pandemic, their recovery demand even greater support through home visiting.

For the sake of the families, the home visitors, and the legacy of Mrs. Walorski, Congress must finalize reauthorization of the Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting program before year’s end. We know it can be done.