TexProtects is excited to announce the launch of Investing in Texas Families: A Step-by-Step Curriculum for Home Visiting Providers, a new resource designed to help prevention providers prepare for the upcoming Texas Home Visiting RFA — and beyond.
Designed with the RFA process in mind, the curriculum’s broader goal is to support any organization interested in launching or expanding a home visiting program. It features eight easy-to-follow modules, each written in a friendly, accessible tone that cuts through the confusion often associated with starting something new.
If you’re a provider looking to strengthen your capacity to serve families, or considering launching a home visiting program, this curriculum is designed with you in mind.
Interested in accessing the curriculum? Please reach out to Veronica Hernandez for more information.
Our Long-Term Commitment to Expanding Home Visiting in Texas
At TexProtects, our mission has always been centered on preventing child abuse and neglect — and home visiting is one of the most effective, evidence-based strategies to achieve that goal. These programs strengthen families, improve child health and development and increase school readiness.
TexProtects has long been a champion of home visiting in Texas, advocating for investments that have expanded access and impact statewide.
Our advocacy wins include:
Bringing Nurse-Family Partnership to Texas, securing $8.9 million to serve 2,000 families.
Leading the passage of the Texas Home Visiting Expansion and Accountability Act, which brought $7.9 million in new state dollars to reach more than 5,000 families.
Securing $65 million in funding for prevention programming — including home visiting — building on years of legislative success and collaboration.
This new curriculum is the next step in our ongoing work to equip prevention providers with the tools and knowledge they need to make a difference. By investing in providers, we invest in the strong families and communities that make Texas thrive.
Across Texas, a small number of school districts are embracing home visiting programs as a successful strategy to engage families and boost early education outcomes. These evidence-based programs strengthen the parent-child relationship, improve school readiness and connect families to vital community resources — laying the groundwork for long-term academic success.
In partnership with the Texas Education Agency, TexProtects recently conducted a listening tour across the 10 school districts and regional education centers currently offering home visiting programming. We heard firsthand how these programs help families feel more engaged and empowered, while also supporting teachers and campuses.
TexProtects is proud to continue working alongside these districts — creating opportunities for them to connect, share insights and elevate what’s working.
In 2023, there were 58,120 confirmed victims of child abuse and neglect. Texas children deserve better, and together, we can prevent this from shaping their future. Most families want what’s best for their child and placing blame on a parent is not the solution. Children thrive in stable, safe and supportive families, and the best way to protect Texas children is by providing support to the adults in their lives.
Home visiting is a prevention strategy that brings trained staff to support expectant mothers and new families to promote positive parenting and child development, improve school readiness, and prevent child abuse and neglect. Home visiting is a two-generational approach that reduces risk factors while simultaneously increasing protective factors that support caregivers and their children.
Depending on the programs, outcomes of home visiting include:
Depending on the program, Improved maternal and newborn health: 69% reduction of infant deaths, 50% reduction in low birthweight babies, and 36% fewer subsequent teen births.
Improved school readiness: 1.5-2 times more likely to test ready for kinder; 5 times more likely for 1st grade promotion; outperformance of peers on 5th grade reading/math assessments; 91% parents more involved than peers
Improved family economic self-sufficiency: 83% increase in mom’s labor force, 20% reduction in months on welfare.
Reduced child injuries, abuse and neglect: 35-45% reduction in ER visits and 28-48% reduction in child abuse and neglect.
Reduced crime and domestic violence: 53% reduction in child arrests at age 17.
For every $1 invested in home visiting programs, there is a return between $1.80 and $5.70 outcomes of home visiting include:
The Need for Home Visiting in Texas
In 2023, there were 1,738,500 pregnant women and families with children under 6 years old not yet in kindergarten who could benefit from home visiting.
178,439 home visits provided
16,449 families served
16,582 children served
Only 1.9% of Texas families who could benefit from home visiting received state-funded services.
Expanding and Strengthening Home Visiting in Texas
In 2022, TexProtects successfully advocated for the reauthorization of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) grant program at the federal level, a primary funding source for home visiting and prevention programs throughout Texas communities. Thanks to this recent federal advocacy, MIECHV funding in Texas is set to nearly double by the Fall of 2027.
While this is fantastic news for Texas families and communities, we must be prepared for this positive development. Between now and 2027, TexProtects will work to ensure that its network of home visiting providers, the Texas Prevention Network, has the tools and knowledge to leverage
this increased federal funding and to strengthen and expand the services they provide to families throughout the state. Anyone that works to strengthen families including home visiting programs are welcome as members of the Texas Prevention Network. If you are interested in joining, please contact us at [email protected]. Together, we can all play a part in supporting Texas families and ultimately reducing child maltreatment.
Families are often supported by multiple systems and it’s crucial to collaboratively these factors across multiple sectors of society, not just in silos, to effectively strengthen families.
Originally established in 2012 as the Texas Home Visiting Consortium, this collaborative network began by bringing together approximately 40 home visiting practitioners from across the state twice a year. Thanks to the generous support of Casey Family Programs, we conducted a survey in late 2023 that revealed a significant interest in expanding the impact and potential of this effort. The survey received 86 responses from providers representing 20 different home visiting programs, compared to the historical participation of 40 providers from 6 programs – proving how excited they were about the opportunity to expand our work together.
In response to this overwhelming enthusiasm, and thanks to the generous support of The Jerry and Emy Lou Baldridge Foundation, we have rebranded and relaunched the Consortium as the Texas Prevention Network. This new name reflects our commitment to inclusivity, encompassing both home visiting and other prevention programs that strengthen and support families.
TexProtects’ annual State of the State presentation highlights data and trends shaping the child protection system in Texas. In 2022, the child protection system continued to face challenges that indicate a need for urgent action to support families and kinship support this 88th Legislative Session.
This 88th Texas legislative session, our team is working on five key areas of child welfare and protection. We are advocating for the funding, delivery, and availability of prevention programs, including kinship support, data transparency, and quality workforce retention.
The law that authorizes the bipartisan Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program will expire in September 2022. We cannot afford to lose these federal grants to states, territories and tribes that support evidence-based home visiting for families and children from the prenatal period through kindergarten.
The cost of losing this funding will be more children being abused and neglected, more families losing their children, and, in Texas’ already-over-burdened child welfare system, it would exponentially exacerbate the existing crisis.
According to the National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families, one yearinto the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 40 percent of Latino and Black households with children who rent or have a mortgage reported housing insecurity. Roughly half of low-income Latino and Black households with children, and one third of low-income White households with children, reported little or no confidence in their ability to make their next mortgage or rent payment.
TexProtects Takeaway: The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disproportionately effect communities of color. This new data reveals that 40% of Latino and Black households with children are facing housing insecurity vs. 15% of comparable white households. With the recent expiration of the federal moratorium on evictions, many families may now be facing homelessness elevating the risk of child maltreatment. In order to ensure these families and children have secure housing, we must advocate for the American Rescue Plan Act funding (over $40 billion in housing assistance) to be released to the communities that need it most.
According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, there are evidence-based strategies for schools to address the mental health and well-being challenges among youth that arose or were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. *This PDF is free but does require creating an account with a valid e-mail address for access.
TexProtects Takeaway: The COVID-19 pandemic has been especially challenging for youth. From the loss of loved ones to loneliness and social isolation, these past 18 months have brought about a unique set of challenges. This new resource identifies strategies to address youth mental health and well-being in the school setting. A few examples include school-wide, mental health screenings and school-based health centers with mental health providers.
Researchers at the University of Chicago have recently released this overview of policy, programmatic, analytic, and engagement strategies for leveraging economic supports to promote child and family well-being and prevent maltreatment.
TexProtects Takeaway: We know that financial supports reduce child abuse and neglect by enabling families to better access resources and address their own basic needs. The Centers for Disease Control identifies strengthening economic supports to families as one of their strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect. This brief highlights a similar advocacy strategy often championed by TexProtects – that it is best to intervene with a family before a crisis. The recent Child Tax Credit implemented through the American Rescue Plan Act has the potential to dramatically reduce child poverty by giving families access to economic supports on a monthly basis. It would be beneficial for families and children if this tax credit was made permanent.
A new study provides county-level estimates of the prevalence of child abuse and neglect in Texas analyzing specifically by race and ethnicity and associated access to prevention and early intervention. A blog post from Duke University discusses the study results in further detail.
TexProtects Takeaway: This study examined CPS data at the county level, revealing the wide range of experiences families face when encountering the child welfare system. Across all counties examined, Black children had the highest risk of CPS investigation and higher rates of later-stage CPS contact (including foster care placements and termination of parental rights). Overall, this study revealed what we already know to be true of our current, often discriminatory child welfare system: risk of involvement in the CPS system is more common for children from historically and/or economically marginalized populations. We must confront these inequalities and continue to work to eliminate disparities at all levels of the child welfare system.
A recent study concluded that Family Connects, a universal newborn nurse home visiting program, resulted in a 33% decrease in reported cases to CPS and a 39% reduction in emergency medical care use through age 5.
TexProtects Takeaway: This new randomized control trial reveals exciting and promising outcomes for universal postpartum nurse home visiting programs, such as Family Connects. The Family Connects program is a universally offered nurse home visiting program offered to new caregivers. There are six counties in Texas currently operating Family Connects programs. These programs served more than 1,800 Texas families in 2020. To learn more about Family Connects and how TexProtects advocated to expand the program in the 87th legislative session, check out our newly released End of Session report.
These fact sheets provide data on public benefits, educational assistance, legal relationship options and state laws and Texas’s fact sheet can be found here.
TexProtects Takeaway: 266,337 grandparents are caring for their grandchildren in Texas. Children belong with their families, whenever safely possible. However, not all families have access to the necessary resources to care for additional children. This helpful fact sheet offers grand families a list of resources in Texas including parenting classes, counseling, and food/clothing assistance.
This program evaluation study describes 3 years of implementation of Arkansas’s BehaviorHelp (BH) system, a statewide expulsion prevention support system for early care and education (ECE). The study examined correlation of differences in characteristics including exposure to trauma for children by outcomes including expulsion.
TexProtects Takeaway: The state of Arkansas has launched a statewide effort to reduce suspension and expulsion of young children. Not surprisingly, this study identified children most at-risk for expulsion from school had a history of childhood trauma. We know a child’s reaction to trauma can greatly affect their ability to engage productively in the classroom. Trauma-informed training for all educators is essential to helping children with a history of trauma feel safe and secure in the school setting. Texas requires new teachers to receive trauma-informed care training as part of their orientation, however, a bill passed in the 87th legislative session removes the frequency requirements for trauma-informed care training of current teachers. Texas has a long way to go in ensuring children feel safe and secure in the classroom. A report by Texans Care for Children in 2019 revealed that although the legislature has banned out of school suspensions for pre-k through second graders, a high number of Texas’ youngest students continue to face in-school suspensions at disproportionate rates (highest among students in foster care, special education, and black students and boys).
This report by Frameworks institute explores the cultural barriers to prioritizing children in policymaking, as well as the opportunity to develop a new narrative that is asset focused on child wellbeing instead of child need.
TexProtects Takeaway: When the public thinks about children and policy, they most often think about education and family settings. The public struggles to connect other policy areas (healthcare, housing, etc.) to children’s issues. The Prenatal to Three Collaborative (led in part by TexProtects) works to elevate all policy issues that affect our youngest children. Policies recently in the news such as Medicaid Expansion, the Child Tax Credit, and the federal moratorium on eviction, all have a profound impact on children of all ages and their safety and well-being. In order to help the public make this connection, advocates must be open to new ways of thinking and communicating to better serve our youngest Texans.
