Linkages and referrals

Coordination with and referrals for other community resources and supports is a possible outcome of some of the early childhood home visiting models, even if such coordination and referrals are not an explicit model goal. For example, program staff may directly refer participating families to places in their community where they can receive additional financial, in-kind, medical, or social support services. If programs do not provide direct referral, frequent exposure to home visiting staff may have the indirect result of educating or motivating participating families to seek these services on their own.

These measures assess whether the early childhood home visiting model has referred a family to services such as early intervention, child care, or public benefit programs. Outcome measures in this domain include reviews of home visitor, medical, or school records for indications that the child or family had received a referral to other services in the community, as well as parent reports of receiving a referral and being aware of other services in the community.

For this domain only, HomVEE includes outcomes measured at the provider and family levels. For example, HomVEE would include the number of referrals that a home visitor or other service provider gave to families. This is consistent with the benchmark areas in the MIECHV authorizing statute, which include coordination and referrals for other community resources and support.

Outcomes in this domain also include measures of linkages of study participants to resources in their communities (for example, what resources participants knew about or accessed), even if those linkages are indirect rather than the specific result of a referral by a home visitor or other service provider. Measures of whether a social worker connected with the family also belong in this domain. HomVEE generally categorizes the direction of statistically significant impacts on these outcome measures as ambiguous.

The effects shown in the research are grouped into four categories: (1) favorable, (2) no effect, (3) unfavorable or ambiguous, and (4) not measured. Results for models that only have low-rated research are listed as “not applicable.” For more information on these categories please read the procedures and standards handbook. Only results from manuscripts that receive a moderate or high rating are considered below. This table includes manuscripts links to more information on the model’s effectiveness, implementation, and details on findings in this domain.

Effects shown in research — Linkages and referrals