Home Visiting: An Australian perspective

This paper is based on the Keynote Address given by the author at the First National Home Visiting Conference in Canberra, 18-20 August, 1997. The paper explores a range of questions fundamental in relation to the future of home visiting programs in Australia What are home visiting programs? Who visits whom and to what end? What type of relationship develops and what happens during the visit? Where should such programs fit into agencies and service systems? And what about issues such as funding, ethics and evaluation? Last but not least, how can we learn from the home visiting programs of the past to meet the needs of the present and the future?