Protective Factors Linked to Home Visiting Engagement Among New Mothers
Home visiting is an important service for families with great potential as a tool to prevent child maltreatment. However, research has generally found more consistent home visiting impacts on child development and kindergarten readiness than on avoidance of child maltreatment. The answer to this puzzle may lie in family engagement: it may be that the families who would get the most preventative benefit are less likely to engage with services.
A recent article published in Child Abuse & Neglect, “Protective factors against child maltreatment among postpartum mothers and engagement in home visiting,” looks at this question. Jessica Sprague-Jones, an Assistant Director at the University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships, was a coauthor. The article reports on the results of a study of women who recently gave birth and were offered a referral to home visiting services. Researchers used the Protective Factors Survey, 2nd Edition to understand how the mothers’ scores on factors demonstrated to be protective against child maltreatment, such as nurturing and attachment, social supports, and concrete supports, were associated with whether they chose to engage in services.
The study found that indeed moms with lower protective factors were less likely to agree to a referral to home visiting, and only a small minority of mothers referred to home visiting actually completed any visits. Universal offering of home visiting resulted in low engagement but did engage some families who would other not have been connected to home visiting.
Implications of the study are that measurement of protective factors may better identify mothers with the greatest capacity to benefit from home visiting and might improve future recruitment and program outcomes. Results also demonstrate that making services universally available is an important strategy for engaging particularly hard-to-reach families that would most benefit from home visiting.
Read the full Child Abuse & Neglect Article.