Maternal and Child Health: Home Visiting

Overview

Program Resources

Grants and Funding

Home Visiting Programs in Indiana

Indiana’s home visiting programs are available in all 92 counties to support pregnant women and families with young children. These programs help parents build strong relationships with their children, stay healthy, and connect with community resources. They also focus on helping children be ready for school and supporting families as they work toward long‑term stability and self‑sufficiency.

Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is a national, evidence-based, community health program with over 40 years of evidence showing significant improvements in the health and lives of first-time moms and their children. NFP empowers families to transform their lives and futures by having trained nurses regularly visit moms-to-be starting early in pregnancy and continuing through their first child’s second birthday. The nurses are trained to provide support to the first-time mom and baby specific to their current phase, from pregnancy, infancy, and toddlerhood. The primary goals of the program are to improve pregnancy outcomes, child health and development, and families’ economic self-sufficiency.

NFP Mission: Nurse-Family Partnership positively transforms the lives of vulnerable babies, mothers, and families.

NFP Vision: A future where all children are healthy, families thrive, communities prosper, and the cycle of poverty is broken.

NFP is able to provide services to first time moms in all of Indiana’s 92 counties.

Healthy Families Indiana (HFI) is a voluntary evidence-based home visitation program that is designed to promote healthy families and healthy children through a variety of services including but not limited to parent education that supports child development, access to health care, safety, and connection to community resources. HFI is a multi-site statewide system administered by the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS). HFI services are available in all 92 counties. Healthy Families Indiana is funded by the DCS through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV), IV-E Prevention, and State funds as well as local funds provided to the HFI sites.

Healthy Families Indiana works closely with health clinics, local hospitals, Indiana WIC offices, DCS, and other agencies for family referrals.  HFI systematically identifies families that could benefit from education and support services prenatally or immediately after birth. The program is designed to strengthen families to reduce child abuse and neglect, childhood health problems, and juvenile delinquency.

To download the HFI brochure, click here. For more information on Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) funded services in Indiana, visit the Indiana Department of Health website.

Additional information on HFI is available here: Healthy Families Indiana

Early Head Start (EHS)

Early Head Start serves infants, toddlers, pregnant women, and their families who meet income‑eligibility requirements. EHS programs promote the cognitive, social, and emotional development of young children by emphasizing the role of parents as their child’s first and most important teacher. Programs work with families to strengthen overall well‑being and support connections to needed resources.

EHS services may be home‑based, center‑based, or a combination of both. Early Head Start home‑based programs are recognized as home visiting models at both the state and federal levels. Families are paired with a family support provider who meets with them one‑on‑one in their home or community. These visits help families connect to supports such as food, clothing, baby items, healthcare, job training, and other essential resources.

Head Start

Head Start serves children ages three to kindergarten entry from eligible families. Like EHS, Head Start promotes school readiness by enhancing children’s language, literacy, social, and emotional development, and by building strong, supportive relationships with families.

Find a Program

To locate a Head Start or Early Head Start program in your community, visit:
https://www.in.gov/fssa/carefinder/head-start-and-early-head-start/

Indiana also offers several other home visiting programs that are not part of the national models. These locally designed or adapted programs use evidence‑based or evidence‑informed approaches and are built to meet the specific needs of their communities. They offer more flexibility—such as who can enroll, how long services last, and what supports are provided—while still following their program’s core structure and standards.

Find Home Visiting Programs Near You

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Resources for Families

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Referrals to Home Visiting

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Grants and Funding Resources

Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) helps pregnant women and parents of young children improve health and well-being for themselves and their families. The Program does this by partnering trained home visitors with families to set and achieve goals.

Visit the MIECHV page

Since 2018, the Indiana Department of Health has supported implementation of Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) using state funding. NFP programming has been statewide since 2024 due to the expanded investment from the State.

Visit the NFP page

From 2005 until 2015, Indiana had one of the worst infant mortality rates in the Midwest and the entire country. To help address the critical need to reduce infant mortality, Indiana passed the Safety PIN – Protecting Indiana’s Newborns Grant Program, IC 16-46-14. This legislation allowed non-reverting, state-appropriated funds to be granted to organizations in Indiana in the efforts to reduce infant mortality and improve birth outcomes.

Since the first implementation of the Safety PIN grant, portions of this funding have been used to start and expand locally home grown and evidence-based home visiting programs. Funded programs aim to complement the work of other home visiting funding to broaden the services to families in Indiana without duplicating services.

Visit the Safety PIN page

Previously, the home visiting referral system, through the My Healthy Baby (MHB) Initiative, offered five one-time grants to help support home visiting infrastructure and stabilize the workforce. These grant opportunities included:

MHB Stabilizing the Perinatal Home Visiting Workforce - My Healthy Baby awarded over $3 million to 42 home visiting programs, with the purpose of stabilizing the perinatal home visiting capacity by focusing on staff recruitment and retention.

MHB Infrastructure 3.0 - My Healthy Baby awarded over $600 thousand to 20 home visiting programs with the purpose of supporting one-time infrastructure costs incurred to assure delivery of coordinated and comprehensive voluntary perinatal home visiting services to families.

MHB Infrastructure 4.0 - My Healthy Baby awarded over $460 thousand to 25 home visiting programs to support a one –time infrastructure cost to assure delivery of coordinated and comprehensive voluntary perinatal home visiting services to families. These funds were specifically designated for staff professional development trainings, technology enhancement, language access, and supplies that support client enrollment and retention.