Appendix F

TABLE 1: POTENTIAL OUTCOMES OF HOME VISITING[1]
For children:
  • Participation in home visits, which may be enjoyable, interesting, and stimulating

  • Better relationships and interactions with parents

  • Improved health as a result of better care, reduced abuse and neglect, fewer accidents. This can include:

  • Reduced neonatal mortality and infant mortality

  • Improved birth weight and gestation

  • Fewer birth complications

  • Improved nutritional status

  • Improved health status

  • Fewer injuries

  • Less disability and developmental delay

  • Fewer repeat hospitalizations and acute care visits

  • More regular access to preventive health care, including well-checks and immunizations

  • Improved development (primarily cognitive, but also social and emotional) as a result of home visit activities and/or better parent-child interaction which, over time, results in increased educational success and greater social adjustment. This can include:

  • Less disability and developmental delay

  • Better school attendance

  • Greater academic ability and achievement

  • Less grade retention and special education placement

  • Less crime and delinquency

  • Increased educational attainment

  • Increased employment and earnings

  • Increased occupational and social status

  • Improved household management

  • Higher quality community participation and leisure

  • Better family relationships

  • Greater control over timing and number of children

For parents:
  • Home visits and related social activities

  • Better relationships with and support from other family members, greater confidence in and satisfaction with parenting

  • Improved health as a result of better care. This can include

  • Fewer birth complications

  • Improved nutritional status

  • lmproved health status, less illness

  • Increased education and training

  • Increased employment and earnings (directly or indirectly, as a result of increased education)

  • lmproved socioeconomic status and self-sufficiency

  • Improved timing and spacing of births, possibly with reductions in the number of children

For taxpayers:
  • Reduced government expenditures (including administrative costs) for

  • Health care

  • Education

  • Social services

  • Welfare payments

  • Criminal justice system

  • Food stamps

  • Foster care

  • Increased tax revenues

  • Payroll taxes, sales tax, other

  • Decreased social problems

  • Poverty and economic inequality

  • Crime and delinquency

  • Teenage pregnancy and unwanted children

  • Child abuse and neglect

  • More competent and fully participatory fellow citizens

[1] W. Steven Barnett, Economic Evaluation of Home Visiting Programs , The Future of Children, Home Visiting, Vol. 3 • No. 3 - Winter 1993