Summary of Pennsylvania Home Visitation Stakeholders Meeting
June 4, 2013
Topic
Welcome
Introductions
Opening
Details
Mimi Gavigan read Stone Soup, a delightful children’s story that underscores the riches that come from
collaboration. This was followed by a discussion of how the story relates to home visiting.
Updates
 Sequestration
Tracey Campanini provided an update on what is known about sequestration. She shared that Head Start is
bracing for a 5.27% reduction in the federal grant but that less is known about the size and scope of reductions
to other funding sources.
Camille Catlett shared a 5-minute video (Building Adult Capabilities to Improve Child Outcomes: A Theory of
Change) to highlight the importance of everyone’s work in building the capacity of adults to support infants
and toddlers. The video is available at
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/multimedia/videos/theory_of_change/

ZERO to THREE Tracey also mentioned that work is underway on a targeted technical assistance project related to providing
quality services and supports for Pennsylvania’s infants and toddlers. A team from Pennsylvania (Tracey
technical
Campanini, Jim Coyle, Maureen Murphy, Cathy Palm) attended an initial planning meeting and will present
assistance
ideas to the Early Learning Council regarding activities that will support infant-toddler workforce development.

Building
Bridges
Tracey also mentioned work that the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics has been
invited to roll out of Building Bridges, a program for establishing connections between pediatricians and
targeted prevention efforts. Dr. Beth DelConte will be leading this work in Pennsylvania. Additional information
is available at http://www.healthychildcare.org/BuildingBridges.html.
Work Group
Updates
Work Group 1: Defining, Promoting, & Sustaining Home Visiting – This group, led by Cathy Palm, has worked
to create a definition of home visiting for use in Pennsylvania. A draft was developed and sent out for input.
The results, which reflect input from 29 organizations, are attached. Once a final draft has been recognized as
an official product of the MIECHV stakeholders, Work Group 1 has identified a sequence for sharing the
definition and its implications/uses with Deputy Secretary Minzenberg Secretary Mackereth, the Task Force on
Child Protection, the Joint State Government Commission, and leaders in other state agencies.
Work Group 1 has respectfully asked for clarification from OCDEL on how a definition might be used to support
work toward the attainment of Pennsylvania’s vision for home visiting. The group would specifically appreciate
guidance from OCDEL leaders so they can better understand where and how the guidance they are working on
might be used. Mimi and Tracey will get clarification and share it with Work Group members.
Topic
Work Group
Updates
(continued)
Details
Work Group 2: Collaborating Among Home Visiting Partners – With leadership from Lee Sizemore, this group
is working to create a visual representation of where and how home visiting fits within the constellation of
early learning supports and services in Pennsylvania. A next step will be to gather sample graphics from other
states for ideas.
This Work Group is also looking at mechanisms that can support and enhance collaboration including
memoranda of understanding (MOUs), centralized intake, lunch and learns, and joint child find activities.
Future home visiting meetings will provide opportunities to share promising practices with the stakeholders.
An additional area of deliberation for this work group is what to call the overarching system serving and
supporting young children and their families. PA Early Childhood Care and Education System, PA Early
Childhood Care, Education and Support System, and PA Child and Family Development Collaborative Network
are three options that are under consideration.
Work Group 3: Professional Development/Competencies – Mimi Gavigan has led Work Group 3 in seeking a
crosswalk between Pennsylvania’s Core Body of Knowledge and competencies for home visitors. They will be
looking at competencies from other states to provide examples and plan to have competencies in place by
June 2014.
Work group members also used priorities that have been generated by the home visiting stakeholders to
identify topics for sessions at the October early childhood summit.
Centralized Intake
Colleen Masi of Erie County shared the process that they are using to create a centralized intake system. She
shared both hopes and the challenges Erie County has faced and offered excellent questions that future
PowerPoint slides designers of such systems will need to consider. These include:
supporting this
 Who hires the central intake person?
presentation are
 How do you train the central intake person to understand all the available models?
available at
 Who owns the system? Who guides the system? Who is accountable for the system?
http://www.fpg.
 What data needs to be tracked and how (e.g., format to screen for eligibility, flow chart, referral sources,
unc.edu/presentat
timeliness of response)?
ions/pennsylvania  What should guide referrals – geography? Program specifics?
-home-visitationIn addition, Colleen underscored how important it is to identify a neutral, unbiased agent to serve as the
stakeholderssystem administrator.
meeting-june2013
Topic
Updates
Additional details
are available in the
PowerPoint slides
supporting this
presentation at
http://www.fpg.
unc.edu/presentat
ions/pennsylvania
-home-visitationstakeholdersmeeting-june2013
Details
Michelle Hill provided an overview of the efforts that are underway to evaluate Pennsylvania’s home visiting
programs and progress. These include tracking of demographics, service utilization, and benchmark data
through a data system that is in the final stages of design, CoPAM (Pennsylvania’s MIECHV evaluation, formerly
known as Policy Lab), MIHOPE and MIHOPE – Strong Start (federal evaluation efforts). The PowerPoint
presentation (see box at left) provides additional details about each of these components.
In addition, Michelle is also leading a Work Group that will focus on Continuous Quality Improvement.
Karen Seeber shared information about Guiding Parents Smoothly. Details are available in the PowerPoint
slides and at http://paprom.convio.net/site/PageServer?pagename=Infant_GPS_home
Camille shared new home visiting resources which are posted at the same URL as the PowerPoint slides.
RESULTS FROM THE SURVEY MONKEY
29 organizations responded (34 total individuals responded - some organizations had more than one person
respond)
 33 agreed with the Vision (1 skipped the question)
 32 agreed with the core components of high quality home visiting, 1 said they didn’t know, 1 skipped
 29 agreed with the definition of evidence based/promising programs (2 said they didn’t know, 1 no and 2
didn’t answer)
 28 said having a consistent agreed-to vision and definitions would be helpful (5 said they didn’t know)
Pennsylvania’s Vision: A statewide system of high quality home visiting services that will, in
partnership with families and communities, strengthen, support, and promote prenatal health,
family well-being and early childhood health, safety, development and education.
Core Components of High Quality Home Visiting Services in Pennsylvania include:
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Voluntary and delivered primarily within the home of the parent(s) and child.
Intentional in engaging, assessing and strengthening the capacity and confidence of a
child's first protector and teacher - the parents;
Focused on the whole family to promote – across generations – improved prenatal
health, positive maternal and infant birth outcomes, family well-being, early childhood
health, safety, development and education;
Operates with fidelity to an evidence-based model or a research-based or evaluated
assessment and curriculum that specifies the purpose, outcomes, duration, and
frequency of services. ;
Employs well-trained, and culturally competent staff and provides continual professional
development relevant to the specific program model or research-based curricula being
utilized; and
Demonstrates strong understanding of and linkage to other community-based crosssystems services; and
Demonstrates effectiveness with a commitment to measure and report outcomes and
continuous improvement.
High quality home visitation services are a core component of the Commonwealth’s early
care and learning strategies across all child and family serving systems. Pennsylvania is
committed to ensuring that existing or future public investments are intentionally
targeted to highest risk families and most often into services that are evidence-based.
 Evidence-based programs utilize a program based on a clear, consistent model as
identified by the Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HOMVEE) review authorized
by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. These models include
a program that with fidelity provides research-based services grounded in relevant,
empirically-based knowledge and operates within an organization that ensures
compliance with well-established and tested home visitation standards.
Pennsylvania also recognizes that children and families also benefit from a fuller array of
home visitation services that are of high quality, but have not secured the designation of
evidence-based.
 Promising programs follow with fidelity a singular research-based model or some
combination of models or curricula that have demonstrated nationally recognized
outcomes with regard to effectiveness, including participation in on-going program
evaluation and outcome measurement
COMMENT: Change made to address this comment - The wording in the Promising programs line (... curricula that have
demonstrated nationally recognized research with regard to effectiveness ...) seems a little awkward to me. Should it be
nationally recognized "'outcomes?"
Do you support the Vision?
 I think it is important that in trying to achieve this vision, the uniqueness of different
programs/professionals/program goals and structure under the banner of the term "home visiting" are
recognized.
 in partnership with one another (models, systems, etc.)

Do you support the Core Components of High Quality Home Visiting Services?
 slight concern with "evaluated assessment and curriculum"
 Adding continuous improvement is good
 I am not sure if this mirrors the federal definition of high quality home visiting services exactly. I have no
issue with the content, but again, want to make sure there is consistency with MIECHV.
Do you agree with the following definitions of evidence-based and promising programs?
 agree with definitions, but not fully supportive of targeting highest risk - others within eligible categories
benefit as well
 I currently run a program that is not evidence-based that I find to be of equal or greater value to the
community than many programs currently considered more valuable b/w they are evidence-based.
 I like how you separated the two programming types and how we are committed to including promising
programs in PA.
 I believe that we should use and be consistent with the federal definition and still struggling with
the inclusion of language relative to language to support programs/models not included in the
federal definition within the scope of work within the MIECHV stakeholders group. I see value in
these services, but believe we need additional direction from OCDEL/system - to understand
what the work of the group and vision is to carry out to support this definition.
 I like the reference to HomeVee, but would prefer to see the exact language from the federal
legislation for MIECHV since the state is implementing the MIECHV program and charged with
operating under those definitions. Having a similar, but not exact definition will introduce
confusion in the field between MIECHV grantees and others.
Do you envision that having a consistent agreed-to vision and definition of evidence-based and
promising programs will be helpful to you in your work? If not, please indicate why and if yes, please
share ways in which you envision it can be utilized/helpful.
 To support sustainability and enhance funding; Also to credibly define our work in many settings
 Our organization's mission is to advocate for increased public investments in evidence-based programs, so
a consistent vision/definition could be useful in educating/persuading state legislators
 In our work supporting Family Centers as well as county Children and Youth agencies.
 financing, expansion of EBHV, targeting services to high-risk populations
 As an evidenced based program, the definition reinforces our commitment to providing families with best
program services we can and would help potential funders identify quality programs.
 It is my hope that everyone will use this language when talking to legislators, funders and the community
about the variety of high - quality home visitation programs in our state. That Promising Programs deliver
the same quality of services as those on the federal evidence - based list.
 For Title V-funded MCH and the Healthy Start programs, it will be useful to have guidelines to develop
home visiting programs that might qualify as promising practices.
 Help with funding as well as more recognition about positive outcomes in our EHS and healthy Family
America programs
 helps individual programs articulate their own missions; will certainly help with the moves toward
centralization of intake efforts and coordination of HV services on a local as well as statewide level;
hopefully will help the lay person/public better understand what HV is and what it provides
 Can communicate with pediatric practices on what the consistent vision/purpose of HV is as well as what
the key core content components are that parents will hear/experience. Intent would be support and
collaboration from pediatricians for HV in the community.
 Since a definition has been developed for states under MIECHV, suggest that a separate state definition is
not needed and would introduce confusion. There is a need for consistency.
Please feel free to share any additional information, questions, ideas about home visiting in
Pennsylvania.
 Continuing report-out of benchmark data at regular intervals will also be important to support our
conversations. Thanks for the great work of this group of stakeholders!
 Good work. Sorry we weren't able to be at last week's meeting.
 I feel that this work we are doing in the MIECHV Stakeholder group is very valuable in promoting the value
of home visiting in nurturing healthy children, families, and communities. I do think it is important that
the PA Dept. of Health be an active partner in these collaborative efforts since they are
funders/implementer of an array of MCH programs.
 This committee has done an outstanding job of creating a succinct, clear and easily understood definition
that I fully support. THANK YOU.
ORGANIZATIONS COMPLETING THE SURVEY
1.
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3.
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5.
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8.
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13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
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21.
22.
Allegheny County Health Department
Bethlehem Health Bureau
Capital Area Head Start
Center for Schools and Communities/ PA PAT State Office
Chester County Health Department
Community Prevention Partnership of Berks County
Dauphin County MH/ID/EI Program
Early Learning Investment Commission
Erie Family Center for Child Development
Fight Crime: Invest in Kids (note not a member of the MIECHV Subcommittee but shared w/them)
Greater Harrisburg Healthy Start
ICF International
Maternity Care Coalition
Nurse Family Partnership – National Service Office
Office of Child Development University of Pittsburgh (note not a member of the MIECHV Subcommittee
but shared w/them)
Pennsylvania Chapter – American Academy of Pediatrics
PA Child Welfare Resource Center
PA Coalition Against Domestic Violence
Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape
Pennsylvania Head Start Association
PA Key
Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
PA Perinatal Partnership
Protect Our Children Committee
The Guidance Center
STEP, Inc.
Snyder, Union, Mifflin Child Development
TIU 11
United Way of the Capital Region