Early intervention home visiting — evaluated and revisited!: Evaluation of a preventative model to strengthen isolated families

This article is a follow-up of a paper describing a proposed ‘best practice’ model for a home visiting service for first-time parents (Drielsma, 1998). The results of three years implementation and evaluation of a pilot of that model in a geographically isolated semi-metropolitan high growth area on the Central Coast, NSW are presented and discussed. The service uses paid professionals within the context of a ‘Family Centre’ with a volunteer network to offer ongoing home visiting support to first-time parents who are facing social and geographical isolation and who have few supports and resources to meet their needs. Importantly, the service has relied on close collaboration with child health services and a partnership with other community agencies and the local community itself. The external evaluation used a mix of Action Research and quantitative tools. This showed that the pilot model effectively engaged ‘high-risk’ families in a non-stigmatising way. Further, these families were networked to an array of other mainstream child health and family support services. The essence of this model was described through an Action Profiling process and this correlated closely with the model's structural parameters of operation.