Parent Child Interactions

One of the central goals of home visiting is promoting positive parent-child interactions. Home visitors who more effectively facilitate parent-child interactions tend to have families with more successful program outcomes (Roggman et al., 2001). Sometimes home visits and home visitors, however, lose their focus on parent-child interactions (Hughes-Belding et al., 2019; Peterson et al., 2007). The supervisor plays a critical role in helping home visitors remain focused on parent-child interactions. This occurs by helping the home visitor both develop confidence and competence in effectively coaching parent-child interactions and problem solving how to stay focused on parent-child interactions despite the many stresses some families face.

The videos below demonstrate supervisors helping home visitors think about how the home visitors might promote parent-child interactions more completely or effectively. In the first video you’ll see the supervisor gently point out an opportunity they home visitor had to talk about the parent-child interaction more in her home visit. In the second and third videos you’ll see different ways in which the supervisor helps the home visitor think through how a conversation about parent-child interactions could have gone and rehearse approaches to use in future conversations.