Washington Wins Again, Earns a $25 Million Home Visiting Grant

Washington State won another federal contest for a major early learning grant this week.

The federal government will send roughly $25 million to Washington during the next three years to expand voluntary home visiting services for at-risk families, the Department of Early Learning announced yesterday.

The Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting grant is the latest expansion of home visiting work, which has grown rapidly during the last couple of years, in the state. With this new money, Washington invests six times more in this work than it did two years ago, DEL said.

Initially, Washington will spend $6.6 million of its grant in the first year supporting home visits for 545 at-risk families. In home visits, nurses and others professionals visit families during pregnancy and up until a child is five years old, offering support for healthy child and family development, according to the agency. Research has shown the strategy improves the chances a child is born healthy and reduces abuse and neglect.

The challenge is less than 12 percent of eligible families actually receive high-quality home visits. To address that issue, the Washington legislature created a mechanism, the Home Visiting Services Account, in 2010 to help match public funding. The new federal grant should help raise that percentage.

?Home visiting makes a significant difference for children and families, and we are extremely grateful that the state Legislature created the HVSA with bipartisan support and specific attention to quality implementation of programs ? and remains committed to it,? Thrive by Five Washington president Nina Auerbach said. ?It?s this kind of leadership that makes Washington state a national leader in home visiting ? and a place where all children can get a great start.?

The Department of Early Learning is the lead agency for the federal grant and will team up with Thrive by Five to implement the work.

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