Home Visiting During COVID-19: The Transition From In-Person to Virtual Visits

In October, seven months after many L.A. County home visiting programs began transitioning to virtual services, the Los Angeles County Perinatal and Early Childhood Home Visitation Consortium asked home visitors how things were going. All home visiting programs throughout the county were invited to share their experiences in an online survey.

The Consortium heard from 172 frontline staff and 75 program managers. The two infographics below show the results.

At LA Best Babies Network (LABBN), where the Consortium is based, we oversee the First 5 LA-funded Welcome Baby program and its partner programs (which use either the Parents as Teachers or Healthy Families America model). From the overwhelmingly positive evaluations we see from families, it’s clear that home visitors in L.A. County have done a remarkable job providing valuable home visiting services — even when they can’t physically visit homes. The Consortium’s survey shows that they have become more comfortable and adept at supporting families over Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms, but there are still opportunities to improve. LABBN continues to support staff with training and resources to help them help families, which has become more important than ever as the COVID pandemic rages on.

Do you know someone who is pregnant in L.A. County? Tell them to visit WelcomeBabySupport.org to see if their delivery hospital offers the free Welcome Baby program. For a directory of all programs, including doula services, see the Consortium’s home visiting eDirectory.

Click the images below to make them larger.