This special edition of the Baby Monitor focuses on home visiting as a method of supporting families during their child's first years of life. Professionals in the infant-family field have been familiar with home visiting services for some time, but only recently did home visiting gain national visibility. The enactment of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (health care reform) allocated new federal funds to expand evidence-based home visiting programs in states across the country. This exciting opportunity is on the fast track (applications were due July 8th), and states must grapple with decisions about how to replicate high-quality programs, expand services, and maintain model fidelity. To help states and professionals interested in home visiting, we feature the following resources and tools:

• The ZERO TO THREE Policy Center's New Home Visitation Self-Assessment Tool for States, helps states throughout the federal home visiting grant process, implementation, and ongoing assessment and quality improvement of their home visiting service system.
• Supporting Parents and Child Development through Home Visiting, a policy brief by the ZERO TO THREE Policy Center.
• Highlights from Successful Early Childhood Home Visitation Systems, a ZERO TO THREE webinar that featured four states and their innovative approaches to building an early childhood home visitation system.
• The July 2010 edition of the Zero to Three Journal is entitled Home Visiting: Past, Present, and Future. The contributors to this issue describe how the landscape for home visiting has changed over the last decade, with greater collaboration among national home visiting models and more rigorous evaluation leading to a better understanding of the key factors that can make programs successful. Order your issue now!
• Join the discussion! A new home visiting discussion is now taking place on the ZERO TO THREE Policy Network Facebook page. Share your stories and ideas about home visiting in your state, and learn about how other states are planning for the new federal home visiting funds.

Federal Policy Update

Congress started its Independence Day recess after beginning the appropriations process, but they left several important issues hanging. The House passed a one year budget target that ended up being $7 billion below the President’s request. House Appropriations Subcommittees began considering FY2011 bills, with the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education bill (which contains most programs important to infants and toddlers) scheduled to come up soon after the recess. Looking at the bigger picture, Congress did not act to extend either unemployment benefits or enhanced federal matching for Medicaid, increasing the likelihood of cuts to state services important to children and families. Coming up after the recess: possible House action on the reauthorization of child nutrition programs and consideration of appropriations, although final resolution of funding levels is not expected until after the November election.

As the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform looks at strategies to reign in the federal budget deficit, advocates for human needs and children’s programs have focused on the implications of such decisions if a broad budget cutting approach is recommended. Speaking on behalf of the Children’s Leadership Council, Matthew Melmed, Executive Director of ZERO TO THREE, testified before the Commission last week.

The Wisconsin Joint Committee on Finance created the state’s first early childhood quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) – called YoungStar – on June 23 when it approved funding for the program by unanimous vote. YoungStar is a five-star rating system for early care and education providers based on four main criteria: educational qualifications, learning environment and curriculum, professional practices, and the health and well-being of children. The decision by the Joint Committee on Finance made $5.6 million immediately available to the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) to begin implementing YoungStar. YoungStar includes training and technical assistance to providers, fiscal incentives for providers to improve quality, and communication to parents regarding the QRIS. Participation in YoungStar is mandatory for all providers serving families participating in Wisconsin Shares, the state’s child care subsidy program, and will also include early childhood education providers, such as pre-K, Head Start and Early Head Start.

Read the full state policy update now!

Washington State Home-based Early Learning Initiative
The Early Learning Initiative was launched by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Washington State in 2006 to improve the school readiness of children. Recently, Mathematica conducted an evaluation of two communities that implemented plans to meet the initiative's goals and two briefs emerged, Better Beginnings: Developing Home-Based Early Learning Systems in East Yakima and White Center, and Better Beginnings: Partnering with Families for Early Learning Home Visit Observations. The briefs describe the experiences of the two communities in implementing home-based early learning services, and provide recommendations for developing and evaluating home-visiting programs.

Childhood Poverty and Adult Outcomes
A new report published by the Urban Institute, Childhood Poverty Persistence: Facts and Consequences, explores the link between childhood poverty and adult outcomes. The report analyzes data from 1968 to 2005 and finds that almost half of children born into poverty will spend at least half of their childhood living in poverty. Thirteen percent of all children are poor at birth, and these children are significantly more likely to not receive a high school diploma, have a teen non-marital birth, and experience poverty in adulthood.

Children's Health and Hardship
Children's Health Watch recently released Healthy Families in Hard Times, a brief measuring the impact of hardship on very young children. It reports that recent research shows that babies in families experiencing a combination of food, housing, and energy insecurity are more likely to have health problems, which can persist into adulthood. The brief gives policy recommendations that focus on improving the lives of these children through strengthening and coordinating current programs.