Item #4 on a proposed agenda for the new administration

Dear President-Elect Obama,

 

The strains of parenting are perhaps felt most keenly by our military families who must deal with life threatening danger, multiple deployments, repeated moves, and separation from extended family. Almost half of all active duty members have children and nearly 40 percent of these children are under 5. More than a third of first-time military parents are 21 years old or younger; many are living apart from extended family. These families deserve support to help them in their role as parents.

 

Parents as Teachers National Center has entered into a partnership with the Department of Army to provide parenting support services to young military parents through a program called Heroes at Home. This uniquely tailored program provides specialized home visiting services for military families that address their unique needs. 

We recommend that this program be brought to scale so that military families in all service branches, including the guard and reserve, who have children up to kindergarten entry age will be able to benefit from these home visitation services.

Respectfully yours,
Your Parents as Teachers Friends

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Item #2 on a proposed agenda for the new administration

 

Dear President-Elect Obama,

 

It makes sense to spend your budget on proven practices…programs that work and have the evidence to back their claims. But when “evidence-based” is too narrowly defined, its usefulness is compromised. So here’s the second in our list of suggestions for you as you plan your administration’s priorities.

 

2.       Establish a more inclusive definition of evidence-based home visitation programs

Parents as Teachers National Center fully supports the emerging state and federal policy trend of funding “evidence-based” home visitation programs to ensure that participating families receive high quality services that produce measurable outcomes. However, we have serious concerns about narrowly defining evidence-based programs with the rigid standard of multiple randomized control trials (RCTs).

 

You see, RCT is not always the best way to evaluate social programs. Sometimes there are legal, ethical and financial situations that make RCT difficult to pursue. Many eminent researchers agree that RCT is only one of many “methods” in research and evaluation…credibility of research should not be based on a single research design. Here’s one reason why: using only RCT, researchers may not be able to answer the more qualitative question of “what works the best for whom in what situation.”

 

We urge the administration to adopt a more inclusive definition of evidence-based home-visiting programs.

With warm regards,

Your Parents as Teachers friends

Item #1 on a proposed agenda for the new administration

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Yours is a big job and we realize there are many constituents clamoring for your attention just now. We know that some things, like the economy, trump others when it comes to garnering your support, so we thought we’d start a list to help you prioritize some of the biggest issues from our perspective.

1. Expand early childhood home visiting services by enacting the Education Begins at Home Act

Evidence-based home visitation services, such as Parents as Teachers, make a real difference in the lives of children and families by promoting school readiness, increasing long-term school achievement, enhancing parental involvement, reducing child abuse and neglect and increasing health outcomes for children and pregnant women. But only a small percentage of American families are able to receive home visiting services due to insufficient program funding.

This act would establish a dedicated federal funding stream to support quality, voluntary home visiting programs for parents with young children. And rather than requiring all states to offer the same home visitation model, this bill gives states the authority to put into practice a range of evidence-based home visitation approaches that best meet the needs of the families in each state.

First, we recommend that the Obama-Biden administration include the Education Begins at Home Act as a key component of the administration’s early childhood legislative agenda.

Sincerely,

Your Parents as Teachers friends