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Home visiting programs serve more families but serve the same share of eligible children, officials say
Summary
State presenters reported growth in the number of families served by home visiting programs between 2019 and 2022, but the share of the broadly defined eligible population stayed roughly constant; council members asked for better inclusion of regional and community-based programs in future reporting.
Presenters told the Early Learning Council that multi-agency home visiting programs served more children and families in 2022 than in 2019, but cautioned that because eligibility definitions vary across programs the proportion of the eligible population served has not materially changed.
"While there is an increase of the number of children and families being served by home visiting programs, we're serving about the same percent of the eligible population," the presenter (Early Learning and Care staff) said. A child-welfare partner, Catherine, added that the statewide move from regional hotlines to a single statewide child abuse hotline and a structured decision-making model (implemented in 2022) also affected consistent case assignment and reporting.
Council members asked staff to expand data collection to capture regional, community-based and non-state-funded home visiting programs so that the dashboard can show whether system coverage is increasing across all providers, not only state-funded services. Staff said COBES (Center for Coordinating Maternal and Home Visiting Systems) will support more frequent, ongoing data collection and that further work is planned to clarify eligibility definitions and include local partners.
The presenters emphasized cross-agency coordination (OHA, DELC, ODE, ODHS) as a driver of progress while acknowledging limits in administrative data for understanding root causes and family experiences.
