Family Home Visiting: A Proven Strategy for School Readiness

Today's StarTribune and MinnPost both featured a articles on a critical program reaching some of the families most at-risk for sending children to school unprepared. The Minnesota Visiting Nurses Association (MVNA) sends nurses to visit with pregnant teens and teen mothers and new research is showing the important role these visits have in helping these babies one day start school fully prepared.


The nurses visit with the young moms and work with them to answer questions, connect them with resources and share important information about what to expect with their new baby. The Wilder Foundation has completed the first of a two year study on the program in Minneapolis. From the report, MVNA's nurses met with 523 pregnant and parenting teens in the city between Jan 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. Of these mothers, 83 percent were first-time moms and 27 percent were foreign born. The largest ethnic groups represented were African-American (43%) and Hispanic (27%). Ninety-five percent of these babies were born at a healthy weight (compared to 90% in the control group) and 95 percent were born at full term (compared to 89%). Both of these are key early indicators for future health and development.

The value of such a program is how it serves some of the hardest to reach families as early as possible and can connect them with other services that will help them get their children prepared to learn, which leads to an even greater return on investment.

Ready 4 K has long advocated for voluntary home visits to be viewed as a critical piece of a quality early learning system. We made significant progress in 2007, when Ready 4 K was successful in securing additional resources for Minnesota's Family Home Visiting Program and making changes to the law to include school readiness as a goal of the program. As a result of our efforts, Ready 4 K is a member of the Minnesota Dept. of Health's Family Home Visiting Steering Committee, which oversees the implementation and evaluation of the program.

We continue to form alliances and work with a diverse group of stakeholders to ensure that this funding remains intact, and thus far we've been successful. One important step in doing this has been to join forces with the Coalition for Targeted Home Visiting, whose mission is to find a secure and stable funding source for targeted home visiting. The Coalition includes members from public health, schools, community programs, and other deliverers of home visiting, and keeps a watchful eye on the legislative process, both federally and at the state level.

The Coalition is also a member of Minnesota's Future, an alliance of early childhood advocacy organizations advancing a set of shared policy recommendations to Minnesota's next Governor that will improve children's development and readiness for school and for life. In fact voluntary home visiting and parent education programs for every first-time parent is one of the five points on Minnesota's Future platform for the next governor.