Healthy Families is a home visiting program for expectant and new parents developed by Prevent Child Abuse America. Healthy Families program
goals are to promote positive parenting, improve child health and development, and prevent child maltreatment.

Target Population
Expectant and new parents who are identified as at-risk for child maltreatment are the target population. Systematic screening and assessments
are done for the target population using research-based tools to identify those at highest risk. All members of a participant’s family are
encouraged to participate in the visits.

How It Works
Healthy Families provides home visits for expectant and new parents by either paraprofessionals or professionals on a weekly
basis. During the initial visits, the family and home visitor develop specific goals for their work together. Healthy Families targets the following
areas of family functioning and parenting: parent-child interactions, healthcare utilization, child cognitive and social development, and
utilization of formal and informal social supports. The frequency of visits is reduced as the set goals have been met.

Healthy Families does not use a specific curriculum. However, it does provide a framework for services through its 12 critical elements
distilled from intensive reviews of the research literature. Programs have a great deal of flexibility in structuring service delivery within
this framework. For example, individual programs can choose from existing parent education programs (Parents as Teachers, Nurturing Program)
to use when working with families. This allows local programs to mold their interventions to the specific needs and developmental stages of the
families being served.


12 Critical Elements:
Service Initiation

• Initiate services in the prenatal period or at birth.
• Use a standardized assessment tool to systematically identify families who are most in need of services.
• Offer services voluntarily and use positive outreach efforts to build family trust.

Service Content

• Offer services to participating families on a long-term basis.
• Services should be culturally competent and materials should reflect the diversity of the population served.
• Services are comprehensive and focus on supporting the parent as well as supporting parent-child interaction and child development.
• Families should be linked to a medical provider and other services as needed.
• Staff members should have limited caseloads.

Staff Characteristics

• Staff should be selected based on their ability to establish trusting relationships with families.
• Training should be provided to staff in such areas as cultural competency, substance abuse, reporting child maltreatment, domestic violence, and services available in their community.

Evaluation Research
Healthy Families America was initially conceived as a method for building a universal system of support for all expectant and new parents as the
foundation for the prevention of child abuse and neglect. Over the years it has been implemented as a prevention program for specific target
populations yet there is little consistency across programs in terms of staff educational level, program curricula, or protocols for reducing risk.
While the program was developed to allow for local flexibility; this has led to difficulty in comparing the evidence of effectiveness across
studies. Given this, the results of evaluations have been mixed. Evaluations have been conducted using randomized controlled trials as
well as quasi-experimental and non-experimental designs.

Outcomes
A large body of non-experimental and quasi-experimental studies suggests that the program is associated with positive impacts in
child health outcomes, maternal health and education, parenting knowledge and skills, positive parent-child interaction, and in reducing child
maltreatment. Additional long-term evaluations of the Healthy Families model are needed to provide a better
picture of the program’s effectiveness in reducing child maltreatment.


National Contact Information
Healthy Families America
Prevent Child Abuse America
200 South Michigan Avenue, 17th Floor
Chicago, IL. 60604
312-663-3520
www.healthyfamiliesamerica.org

North Carolina Contact
Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina
3725 National Drive, Suite 101
Raleigh NC 27612
919-829-8009
info@preventchildabusenc.org