Home visiting: recent program evaluations--analysis and recommendations.

The winter 1993 issue of The Future of Children examined the practice, policy, and research underlying home visiting programs for families with young children. At that time, we estimated that as many as 200,000 children and families were enrolled in home visiting programs whose primary goals were preventive in nature (for example, to prevent preterm or low birth weight births, to promote healthy child development or school readiness, or to prevent child abuse). We cautioned that the research on home visiting programs was limited in scope and findings were mixed, but concluded that results were promising enough to suggest that the expansion of home visiting was warranted.