Home Visitation Collaborative
Why Home Visiting Matters
Black families in the St. Louis zip codes with the highest infant mortality rates often face numerous barriers accessing the information and resources they need. Home visiting programs bridge that gap by sending nurses, educators or community health workers directly to a family’s home, where they develop a personal relationship and serve as a resource to support that family during pregnancy and throughout the early years of their child’s life.
Home visiting programs focus on health, educational, economic and social outcomes for families, including:
- Infant health and reducing infant mortality
- Maternal mental health
- Positive parent-child interaction
- School readiness
- Preventing child abuse and neglect
However, there are often barriers that prevent these home visiting programs from having the greatest possible impact and reaching every family that needs them.
What FLOURISH is Doing to Make a Difference
In an assessment, FLOURISH found that the St. Louis region’s robust network of providers do not regularly or systematically coordinate delivery of services. Funders and policymakers influence which services families receive and the geographic areas where services are delivered, but home visiting services are not always targeted to the zip codes where the need for services is the greatest. Home visiting programs also are in competition for funding, which makes it hard to collaborate, share data or work together to improve families’ lives. Read the full report.
FLOURISH looked to model successful programs across the country, including Promise 1000 in Kansas City and Every Child Succeeds in Cincinnati, as it built infrastructure to support a collaborative for home visitation in St. Louis. These programs demonstrate that investment in early childhood positively impacts health outcomes for families. Every Child Succeeds has reduced the infant mortality rate for infants enrolled in their program from 9.9 per 1000 live births to 4.7 per 1000 live births in the City of Cincinnati.
With insights from these collaboratives, FLOURISH, along with home visiting providers, consumers of home visiting, and other stakeholders, created the St. Louis Home Visiting Collaborative. This partnership establishes the infrastructure to support home visiting providers and consumers, encourages coordination to improve the network and ensures provider organizations are prepared to meaningfully and respectfully engage with families. Download materials from Home Visiting Collaborative meetings.
Because centering community members to lead and design the development of solutions is core to FLOURISH, we also have created an advisory board of local families who have participated in home visitation. This group is advising providers on how they can provide culturally appropriate services to better engage and retain families and to develop their leadership capacity to advocate for strengthening home visiting services.
If your organization is interested in becoming a member of the Home Visiting Collaborative or if you are a family who has participated in home visitation and would like to serve on our advisory board, please contact Leah Moser at lmoser@generatehealthstl.org.
