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Last week, the US House of Representatives reauthorized an extension for the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program at the current funding levels of $400 million through March 2017. Though funding for this program was set to expire on March 31, 2015, this extension is the first step in maintaining support for families facing economic and social challenges.

As recently highlighted in our blog, the Home Visiting Program provides families with a range of services, including weekly visits from a nurse, social worker or early childhood educator that aid in promoting healthy child development, increasing school readiness, and building parental capacity through positive parenting. In addition, the program helps by providing guidance to parents in assessing health, social service and child development professionals.

Since 2010, the program has helped serve approximately 115,500 parents and children in 787 counties in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and five territories. In addition, the program has demonstrated improvements to children’s health, preventing child abuse and neglect, and increasing self-sufficiency for families involved.

As part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, the next step in ensuring that this program continues supporting families is for the Senate to pass the extension as well.   

For more information on the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, read our blog.