Why Early Childhood Home Visiting
Oregon’s early childhood home visiting programs represent a vital, evidence-based approach to supporting pregnant people and families with very young children. These voluntary services provide families with individualized support from trained professionals, with the simple and profound goal to ensure children are safe, healthy, and thriving – and that parents and caregivers feel confident and supported.
While home visiting can be used as a method for providing a wide variety of different types of interventions and supports, the work of CCOHVS is focused on strengthening alignment and coordination for programs that use home visiting as a primary service delivery strategy and which initiate and serve families prenatally and/or in the first five years of a child’s life (although a few offer services for longer periods of time). At the same time, we acknowledge that ECHV programs and services exist in a broader system of early childhood and family family support programs, and that there are many areas of very real (and appropriate) overlap between early childhood and additional family support programs and systems that form a full range of supportive services for families with young children.
Infographic: Prenatal and Early Childhood Home Visits: The Path to Thriving Families
This one-page infographic provides an easy to understand overview of the importance of early childhood home visiting services. It highlights the gaps between those who could benefit from these programs and those who receive them, and the barriers that hinder access for families. Additionally, the graphic details Oregon’s evolving vision for home visiting, spotlighting recent initiatives aimed at prioritizing, innovating, investing in, and collaborating to build a coordinated, family-centered system that ensures every family can thrive.
"All human beings share similar biological attributes, needs, and rights (e.g., the need for food shelter and love; the commonalities of language, families, and feelings) and people live and meet these shared needs and rights in many different ways."
—Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves 2(e), Derman-Sparks, Olden Edwards, M. Goins (2020, p.16)
Leading for Home Visiting Systems Change
CCOHVS functions as a program-neutral backbone organization for a coordinated system of prenatal and early childhood home visiting services. Our work will move the state closer to “equitable, integrated, accessible, inclusive, anti-racist and family-centered” early learning services.
Learning Brief: Families at the Center
This learning brief, available in both English and Spanish, summarizes key principles and practices that Oregon’s Home Visiting System Initiatives (HVSI) governance and advisory groups should consider in their approaches to engaging families in leadership and decision-making to inform and shape home visiting systems change.
Early Learning Map for Oregon
Introducing “ELMO”
ELMO, the Early Learning Map for Oregon, is an interactive data and planning tool created to support Oregon’s early learning partners (schools, community and state agencies, Early Learning Hubs, advocacy groups, and others) in their work on planning and improving early care and education in their region.
