Family Spirit - Early Childhood Home Visiting Program
MONTHLY INFORMATION SESIONS FOR FAMILY SPIRIT ALLIES, PARTNERS, AND STAKEHOLDERS
The Family Spirit Program offers monthly information sessions that provide an opportunity for home-visiting programs interested in Family Spirit Training. For more information and to stay up-to-date with Family Spirit news, subscribe.
About The Program
The Family Spirit - Early Childhood Home Visiting Program is an Evidence-Based and culturally tailored home-visiting intervention delivered by Native American paraprofessionals as a core strategy to support young Native parents from pregnancy to 3 years post-partum. Parents gain knowledge and skills to achieve optimum development for their preschool-aged children across the domains of physical, cognitive, social-emotional, language learning, and self-help. The Family Spirit Program consists of 63 lessons taught from pregnancy to age 3.CHR Programs with dedicated staff working to address maternal and child health. The Family Spirit program trained and certified 114 tribal CHRs from 2013 to 2017.
Evidence from randomized controlled trials have shown the following outcomes:
Parenting
- Increased maternal knowledge
- Increased parent self-efficacy
- Reduced parent stress
- Improved home safety attitudes
Maternal Outcomes
- Decreased maternal depression
- Decreased substance use
- Fewer behavior problems in mothers
Child Outcomes
- Fewer behavior problems in children through age three
- Predicts lower risk of substance use and behavioral health problems over the life course
Impact Story
The 2019 Family Spirit Training for CHR Programs was a unique opportunity to become certified to implement the Family Spirit Program, an evidence-based and culturally tailored home-visiting intervention delivered by Native American paraprofessionals to support young Native parents within their communities from pregnancy to 3 years post-partum. The Family Spirit Training was held in March 2019, in Albuquerque, NM. The training was designed for CHR Programs with dedicated staff working to address maternal and child health in their tribal communities.
