Parents as Teachers recognizes Growing Home’s program alignment with the evidence-based national model, inclusive of stellar data collection and impact documentation processes.

With over 35 years of success, Parents as Teachers (PAT), the home visiting pioneer, continues to innovate and refine its successful model. Its mission is to promote the optimal early development, learning and health of children by supporting and engaging their parents and caregivers. Furthermore, PAT transforms research into outcomes because neuroscience and evidence-based practice are the basis of this home visiting model. Research is transformed into real-life resources and tools for home visiting, early development, and family support professionals.

PAT has proven effective as demonstrated by model evaluation results:

• Children’s developmental delays and health problems are detected early
• Children enter kindergarten ready to learn, and the achievement gap is narrowed
• Children achieve school success into the elementary grades
• Parents improve their parenting knowledge and skills
• Parents are more involved in their children’s schooling
• Families are more likely to promote children’s language and literacy
• It prevents child abuse and neglect

PAT concentrates on young children, focusing on the earliest years of life because those years hold both the most vulnerability and the most opportunity. It helps parents embrace their role as their child’s best, first teacher. The program also focuses on families, teaching resilience and providing foundational supports to vulnerable families. It equips parents with the knowledge and resources they need for child-rearing – from prenatal through kindergarten – to assure a healthy start in life and greater success in school. Additionally, it connects families with community supports, so they thrive where they live and develop greater self-sufficiency.

As part of the model, home visiting professionals assess family needs and partner with parents to set family goals. Home visitors provide necessary information and resources to help parents support the emotional, behavioral, and physical development of their children. Each personal visit includes a focus on parent-child interaction, development centered parenting, and family well-being.

Sobre Growing Home

For 24 years, and in partnership with the community, Growing Home has been cultivating a thriving, healthy, and equitable North Metro Denver by connecting people to services and programs to drive community action in the areas of food, housing, parenting education, and lifelong stability. As a community-centered organization, Growing Home works in partnership with those with lived experience to ensure programs and services are experience-informed and meet the needs of the community.

In 2021, Growing Home trained over 200 families on their children’s development through Parents As Teachers and provided almost 3,000 hours of parenting education to families. 90% of children demonstrated on-track development. For more information, visit growinghome.org.

About the Parents as Teachers Quality Endorsement and Improvement Process

Implementation with quality and fidelity is vital in home-visiting programs as it determines a program’s effectiveness in accomplishing its original goals and intended outcomes. It also verifies that a program is being implemented as designed.

The Parents as Teachers Quality Endorsement and Improvement Process helps ensure that Parents as Teachers affiliates are achieving fidelity to the Parents as Teachers model and facilitates continuous quality improvement. Parents as Teachers affiliates are required to engage in the Quality Endorsement and Improvement Process in their fourth year of implementation and every five years after that. Parents as Teachers’ rigorous endorsement process demonstrates an affiliate’s accountability and credibility to the community, its funders, elected officials, and the partner organizations with which they work. Programs that earn the Quality Endorsement are recognized by Parents as Teachers National Center as exemplary Blue Ribbon Affiliates, delivering high-quality services to children and families.

About Parents as Teachers National Center

Parents as Teachers (PAT) builds strong communities, thriving families, and children that are healthy, safe, and ready to learn. The internationally-recognized evidence-based home visiting model is backed by more than 35 years of research-proven outcomes for children and families. Parents As Teachers National Center, Inc., is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Parents as Teachers affiliates operate in various settings, including health departments, hospitals, and schools, faith-based and non-profit organizations. For more information, visit parentsasteachers.org or Twitter @NatlPAT.