Home Visiting for Child Well-Being, Essay Example

The topic under research of the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare was “Home visiting for child well-being”. The importance of this topic for evidence-based research lies within the field of understanding that much child maltreatment occurs inside the child’s home, and the community members and neighbors may be simply unaware of the fact that a crime is committed next door, which reduces the level of CPS alertness to child maltreatment cases. Therefore, home visiting programs are likely to be more sensitive in detecting the problems children face at home; these programs also help the social workers and CPS officials to estimate the conditions in which children live, evaluating the compliance of their living environment with the basic children’s needs.

There is much strong evidence in support of various home-visiting problems provided at the site of CEBC, including such programs as Healthy Families America and Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) programs, Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY), the AVANCE Family Support and Education Program and Circle of Security (COS) programs, Early Head Start, Families First, Parent-Child Home Program, Parents as Teachers, SafeCare®, and Sure Start. However, more programs should be designed, and more research is essential in designing the appropriate combination of sensitive, continuous care for children who are victims of child maltreatment and neglect, and in achieving the balance between attention and intrusiveness in the life of recovering families, which may be irritating, and may finally result in more aggression.

References

Chaffin, M., & Friedrich, B. (2004). Evidence-based treatments in child abuse and neglect. Children and Youth Services Review, 26, 1097-1113.

Chaffin, M., et al. (2004). Parent-Child Interaction Therapy with Physically Abusive Parents: Efficacy for Predicting Future Abuse Reports. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72(3), 500-510.

Home Visiting for Child Well-Being (2013). The California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare. Retrieved from http://www.cebc4cw.org/topic/home-visiting/