Home Visiting Is Essential
Now, more than ever, home visiting is an essential service for families. Social isolation and families living in cramped conditions can lead to increases in domestic violence and child maltreatment. Home visitors can help mitigate these situations by maintaining contact with families and providing support.*
*all quotes on this page are sample talking points – use them in your next conversation with someone about home visiting!
Strengthening your state and local support
Here are three ways in which you can rally your funders, state leaders, friends, and others, in support of home visiting.
Campaign goal: All existing funders of home visiting will maintain existing home visiting investments, so that families will continue to receive services, and we can retain jobs for home visiting professionals across the nation.
When we stopped visiting families in person due to COVID-19, we pivoted immediately to providing video and telehealth virtual visits to serve families without interruption. Our home visitors are still at work doing visits and screenings. Home visiting programs are rising to the occasion and engaging their communities by providing virtual home visiting, putting together “drop-off” family kits with diapers and activities for families—with appropriate social distancing. If anything, home visitors are working harder than ever!
3 ways to spread the word:
1
Reach out to your local VIP’s!
At Healthy Families America, we know #HomeVisitingIsEssential. Ask your state and local VIP(Very Important People)’s to support your important work. We’ve worked on key messaging to help you make the ask.
Reaching out with the right message is as easy as 1,2,3
2
Spread the love on social media
Whether tweeting directly to your representatives, or using social media to solicit support for #homevisitingisessential in your local community, you can spread the word far through social media (especially while we’re practicing physical distancing!)
3
Submit a video to our video campaign
To bring the #homevisitingisessential campaign to life in another way, the Rapid Response team is launching a new Video Campaign. Videos from your families, community members, and home visiting team can help to emphasize the importance of your work, and our work together.
Home visiting has bipartisan support and plays a leading role engaging our most under-resourced families. This is even more important during the uncertainties of this pandemic. During this economic uncertainty, families receiving home visiting services are experiencing the devastating impacts of loss of income, balancing work without childcare, and difficulty finding food and other necessities – simply trying to survive the months to come. For many, home visitors provide much-needed connections to community resources.*
Healthy Families America is proud to participate with other leading home visiting models in the #homevistingisessential campaign, developed by The Rapid Response Virtual Home Visiting (RR-VHV) collaborative.
During this unprecedented COVID-19 public health crisis, leaders in the national home visiting field have formed a rapid response collaborative to create and disseminate free resources, helping programs transition into the virtual environment and sustain the important work of home visiting.
Learn more about the Rapid Response work here.
Want to contact us?
Interested in learning more about our home visiting programs or helping transform childhoods and communities? Get in touch—we’ll respond as quickly as we can.