D. Kendrick et al., Does home visiting improve parenting and the quality of the home environment? A systematic review and meta analysis, ARCH DIS CH, 82(6), 2000, pp. 443-451
Aims-To evaluate the effectiveness of home visiting programmes on parenting
and quality of the home environment.
Design-Systematic review of the literature of randomised controlled trials
and quasi-experimental studies evaluating home visiting programmes involvin
g at least one postnatal visit.
Subjects-Thirty four studies reported relevant outcomes; 26 used participan
ts considered to be at risk of adverse maternal or child health outcomes; t
wo used preterm or low birth weight infants; and two used infants with fail
ure to thrive. Only eight used participants not considered to be at risk of
adverse child health outcomes.
Results-Seventeen studies reported Home Observation for Measurement of the
Environment (HOME) scores, 27 reported other measures of parenting, and 10
reported both types of outcome. Twelve studies were entered into the meta a
nalysis. This showed a significant effect of home visiting on HOME score. S
imilar results were found after restricting the analyses to randomised cont
rolled trials and to higher quality studies. Twenty one of the 27 studies r
eporting other measures of parenting found significant treatment effects fa
vouring the home visited group on a range of measures.
Conclusions-Home visiting programmes were associated with an improvement in
the quality of the home environment. Few studies used UK health visitors,
so caution must be exercised in extrapolating the results to current UK hea
lth visiting practice. Further work is needed to evaluate whether UK health
visitors can achieve similar results. Comparisons with similar programmes
delivered by paraprofessionals or community mothers are also needed.