CalWORKs Home Visiting Program Evaluation

What is the CalWORKs HVP?

The CalWORKs HVP delivers home visiting services to pregnant women, parents, or caretaker relatives enrolled in the CalWORKs program to support positive health, development and well-being outcomes in program recipients and their children. The CalWORKs HVP uses an inter-generational approach to provide 24 months of home visiting services to:

Help young families reach self-sufficiency by improving family engagement practices.
Support healthy development of young children living in poverty.
Prepare parents for employment.

Forty-four of California’s 58 counties provide CalWORKs HVP services, directly or through subcontractors using evidence-based home visiting models evaluated according to criteria developed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) or an evidence-based program approved by CDSS. Examples of evidence-based home visiting models that counties may use include: Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), Healthy Families America (HFA), Early Head Start-Home Visiting (EHS-HV), and Parents as Teachers (PAT).

What are the aims of the CalWORKs HVP evaluation?

Despite evidence that home visiting improves outcomes for at-risk families, not all eligible and interested pregnant individuals or parenting families have access to these services. Only 20% of at-risk families receive services. California has an estimated 50,000 vulnerable births annually where home visiting services could impact short- and long-term child and family outcomes, including reducing child welfare rates (California Budget and Policy Center, 2019).

The evaluation will measure the impact of integrating evidence-based home visiting services into the CalWORKs program. Using a quasi-experimental design, the evaluation will measure outcomes for parents, caretaker relatives, and children receiving home visiting services through the CalWORKs HVP.