Building Better Programs

CLASP and CAP: An Investment in our Future – How Federal Home Visiting Funding Provides Critical Support for Parents and Children

CLASP, together with the Center for American Progress, interviewed 20 state and 2 tribal MIECHV grantees to understand how federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) dollars are being used to provide evidence-based home visiting services to children and parents, and to identify innovative approaches, successes, and challenges. The results are outlined in a report, An Investment in our Future: How Federal Home Visiting Funding Provides Critical Support for Parents and Children, and in-depth state profiles (accessed through our interactive map here).

Interviews with 22 states and tribal organizations revealed the breadth of innovation and success across the country as a result of MIECHV funding, including the:

    • Expansion of evidence-based home visiting to serve more vulnerable children and families in high-risk communities and keep them engaged in the programs.
    • Establishment of systems within home visiting communities and across services that support children and families, ensuring that families receive the best services to meet their needs.
    • Provision of systemic training, technical assistance, and professional development to support the home visiting workforce.
    • Creation of data collection systems, allowing grantees to analyze, evaluate, and report on data to demonstrate achieved child and family outcomes and improve program quality.
    • Coordination amongst home visiting and other early childhood programs as well as the creation of centralized intake systems, which are collaborative approaches to engaging, recruiting, and enrolling families in home visiting programs across programs and organizations.
    • Use of promising practices and other innovations in order to better serve at-risk populations with unmet needs.

Executive Summary

State Profiles

Full Report