By, Christina Hoag | Freelance Writer
June 27, 2024
Home visitors are change agents whose impact can be felt far beyond the families they serve, reaching other parents and children in the community and even across generations. That was the message that emerged from the 2024 Family Strengthening Network Virtual Annual Summit held earlier this month. 
“Your work has a ripple effect in the community, fostering resilience and growth,” said Sharlene Gozalians, executive director of LA Best Babies Network (LABBN), during her opening address. “Home visiting lays the groundwork of long-lasting transformation in the entire community.”
LABBN supports home visiting programs with technical assistance and training and sponsors the summit to celebrate home visiting. This year’s theme was “Rising Up to Meet the Moment: Honoring Progress, Shaping Tomorrow.”
Los Angeles is home to the nation’s largest home visiting network, which serves as a model for programs throughout the country. From 2014 to 2024, over 152,000 families participated in home visiting, with more than 565,000 completed visits and 106,000 referrals to other agencies, according to LABBN statistics released at the summit.
First 5 LA has long been a key proponent and funder of free and voluntary home visiting, which has been shown to strengthen parental capacity, enhance child development and increase child safety. These services provide families with a trusted partner who comes regularly to the home to offer information and support that strengthen parent-child relationships, as well as connections to other services such as food aid, parent support groups, mental and health care, lactation support and more.
In L.A. County, First 5 LA funds home visiting services delivered through the Welcome Baby program, which families participate in for up to nine months, and the more intensive Healthy Families America and Parents As Teachers programs, which offer three to five years of support.
“Home visitors are agents of change,” said Melissa Franklin, director of Maternal, Child, & Adolescent Health in L.A. County’s Department of Public Health. “You all are what’s right in this world.”
Diana Careaga, director of family support for First 5 LA, said home visiting’s true benefit is far greater than the numbers tell as home visitors have an exponential impact. Client families become role models and teachers for friends, relatives and neighbors, she noted. Moreover, the fortified relationship between parents and children is passed down to future parents. “Bonding attachment can last generations,” she said. “This is a superpower.”
Keynote speaker Sade Burrell, associate dean of student services and special programs at Cuyamaca College in San Diego County, echoed this sentiment in her presentation titled “You Never Know Who You’re Impacting.” Burrell recounted her life story and how adults other than her parents intervened several times to set her on a path from probation, foster care and juvenile hall to a doctoral degree and academic career. “People came into my life,” she said.
Home visitors can be those people, Burrell said, although they may not even realize it. “Healed people heal others. The chain goes on. I can’t help but be appreciative of the work you are doing,” she said.
Declining birth rates have led to a decreased number of families receiving home visiting over the past four years, said Monica Charles, senior data analyst at LABBN. Hospital enrollments decreased by nearly 3,000 from 2022-23 to 2023-2024, to 11,620, although post-partum enrollment increased slightly, from 740 to 873. This increase was due to more referral pathways and outreach by First 5 LA last year via CalWorks and the L.A. County Department of Public Social Services, Charles said.
A trend that became apparent over the past year is the growing lack of stable housing, she said. More families are living in shelters, transitional housing, couch-surfing, and overcrowded conditions. “This adds to the complexity of enrollment,” Charles said.
The vast majority of client families were Hispanic, 74 percent, with 9 percent Black, 6 percent each of white and Asian and 5 percent other. Clients spoke over 50 languages.
Home visiting does particularly well in encouraging health screenings for caregivers and babies and far outperforms state and county averages. Almost 100 percent of participants were screened for depression, for example. Over 90 percent of children had a “medical home” and developmental screenings, while about 87 percent of parents received a six to eight-week post-partum checkup and over 90 percent received education about putting babies to sleep on their backs in order to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Both Karla Pleitéz Howell, executive director of First 5 LA, and L.A. County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis pledged in video messages to continue their unwavering support for home visiting.
“Home visiting professionals have been at the forefront of this movement to prioritize children and families,” Pleitéz Howell said. “We believe in the power of home visiting. What you do matters.”
Alina Moran, president of Dignity Health – California Hospital Medical Center, also stated her organization’s commitment to home visiting and maternal health. Dignity is slated to open this fall a $250 million building in downtown Los Angeles that will double the size of its maternity and newborn care units at a time when other hospitals are reducing maternity services, she said.
Video testimonials from clients highlighted how home visitors provide invaluable support that goes beyond more than child-rearing education. One mom said her home visitor helped her through many “rough patches” and termed her a “blessing in my life.” Another said of her visitor, “She has helped me in almost everything.”
One former client, Whitney Hammock, said that her experience with home visiting directly led to finding a passion for helping people. She now works as a community navigator with Rising Communities in South Los Angeles.
Gozalians of LABBN said these testimonials underscore how “this work is about relationship building. It’s connection before content.”
Click here for LABBN’s coverage of the event, including a series of videos capturing the day.
