National Strategy for the Home Visiting Workforce

Advance a shared understanding of home visiting as a respected, purpose-driven profession that improves family outcomes and offers clear roles, expectations, and opportunities for growth and leadership.

Target messaging and outreach to future members of the workforce (students, educators, workforce intermediaries, families, and related professions).

Leverage national and state-level outreach efforts to highlight the impact of home visiting, the professionalism of the workforce, and the range of skills that contribute to effective practice.

Mobilize cross-sector partnerships to build, align, and scale preparation pathways across career and technical education, high school, two- and four-year colleges, and workforce development systems.

Connect pathways and align them with national core competencies grounded in evidence-based practice and quality standards.

Foster collaboration among home visiting programs, states, education systems, workforce boards, and other key stakeholders to align outreach, preparation, and entry strategies and integrate high-quality home visiting content into certificate and degree programs.

Prioritize strategies that support people who have participated in home visiting services—including parents, caregivers, and community members—to enter home visiting roles.

Provide the preparation, supervision, and career development needed for success.

Share effective practices that strengthen these pathways across programs and models.

Institute the use of effective experiential approaches—including practicums, apprenticeships, fellowships, and job shadowing—to allow people to learn about and experience home visiting work, helping them make informed decisions about entering the profession.

Deploy financial supports—such as scholarships, grants, stipends, and loan repayment—that reduce barriers to entering home visiting careers, in alignment with existing legislative authorities and workforce initiatives.

Support the collection, analysis, and practical use of workforce data to identify gaps and guide entry planning across models, states, and partners.

Analyze data and use it as a learning tool to understand what entry approaches work, for whom, and under what conditions—supporting continuous improvement over time.

Share data on what home visitors do, career pathways, and other key factors to strengthen recognition of home visiting as a profession and advocate for consideration of occupational classification and integration into broader workforce planning efforts.

Advance a shared, field-wide commitment to high-quality practice, professional growth, and workforce effectiveness.

Align learning across technical assistance providers, partner systems, high schools, and two- and four-year colleges to move toward coordinated, on-the-job learning that is grounded in real-world practice and includes coaching and multi-level capacity-building.

Build on current standards, core competencies, and credentialing to support shared, high expectations for practice and learning across the field.

Provide fair and adequate compensation and benefits for home visiting personnel as essential to sustaining a skilled, experienced workforce and ensuring continuity of services for families.

Advance evidence-based guidance and shared learning aligned with workforce standards and sound labor practices to help states, programs, and partners strengthen compensation approaches within existing authorities and contexts.

Increase leadership and supervisory capacity across home visiting through leadership development, on-the-job supervision training, and peer learning.

Establish and maintain shared expectations that support reflective supervision, staff growth, and workforce stability.

Encourage the adoption of staff-focused reflective supervision as a core component of high-quality home visiting services, staff retention, and effective family engagement.

Apply effective approaches—career ladders, progression frameworks, certifications, and credentials—that recognize and reward increased responsibility, leadership, and skill attainment.

Brand home visiting as both a long-term career and a profession that builds transferable skills that can be applied across health, public health, early childhood, and family support systems.

Leverage research and evaluation to deepen understanding of workforce trends and build shared understanding across the field.

Maximize data collection and analysis to identify which approaches best support workforce stability, guide continuous improvement, and reduce fragmentation across models, states, education systems, and partners.

Communicate findings in ways that align expectations, support adoption of effective practices, and inform dialogue with funders and policymakers about on-the-job learning, supervision, and compensation approaches.

Frame workforce well-being as a core system responsibility that is critical to long-term retention of a skilled workforce that delivers high-quality services.

Reinforce policies and practices that support physical and psychological safety, appropriate caseloads, and supportive environments.

Elevate approaches that create positive work conditions, while allowing flexibility across program contexts.

Support home visitors in doing the work they trained for: building relationships with families.

Adopt effective processes, technology tools, and systems to address barriers to efficiency in daily work and reduce daily stressors.

Align data and reporting across models and funders.

Advance adoption of practices shown to promote workforce well-being, while encouraging adaptation based on context and continuous learning.

Provide guidance, sample policies, and implementation resources that help states, programs, and partners translate well-being principles into feasible, sustainable practices.

Launch respectful approaches to recognition and storytelling that highlight the professionalism, vital contributions, and impact of home visitors.

Design recognition efforts that are supportive, voluntary, and thoughtfully resourced—boosting morale and increasing public awareness while respecting home visitors’ time, roles, and preferences.

Analyze home visitor input, retention data, and evidence-informed practices to track progress and guide rapid improvement cycles.

Establish feedback loops between home visitors, supervisors, and organizational leaders. Prioritize workforce voice as the key indicator of the efficacy of well-being efforts.

Share aggregated findings across programs and states to accelerate learning about what sustains workforce health.