A Study Of Early Head Start-Home Visiting（EHS-HV）Program In America

0-3 years is a critical period for infants and toddlers’ physical,cognitive,language,social and emotional development.High-quality family rearing plays a crucial role in supporting infants and toddlers’ individual development and sustainable social development.At present,China pays great attention to the development of early family education,and makes clear the responsibility of the state and society to provide guidance,support and service for family education.However,how to guide family education effectively still faces many challenges.The Early Head Start-Home Visiting（EHS-HV）Program in America started earlier and developed well.It is of great significance to summarize the beneficial experience of the program for enriching and improving the family infant care services in China.EHS-HV is a comprehensive,two-generation,evidence-based home visiting program for low-income pregnant women and families with infants under 3 years of age.It plays an important role in enhancing family parenting function,improving parent-child relationship and promoting children’s positive development.This study adopts the method of literature research and comparative research to sort out and analyze its formation background,development context,goals and content,implementation and evaluation process,summarize its construction experience,and consider the reference significance for the guidance of early family education in China.The study found that the production of the EHS-HV was influenced by the unique social and cultural background,and the EHS-HV was gradually formed under the catalysis of political and practical needs.It went through three stages:the initial exploration stage（1994-2008）,the rapid development stage（2009-2019）and the adjustment stage in the post-epidemic era（2020-present）.Based on the ecological systems theory of human development and the theory of change,the program strives to provide comprehensive and outstanding services for families and infants through weekly family visits,twice-monthly group social activities,and other integrated services and referrals.In terms of the operation process of the program,by flexibly using the "HOUSE" framework and five structural strategies,the home visitors of the EHS-HV carry out the qualification confirmation and information verification of the service objects,determine the service content and method based on the needs,and finally summarize and evaluate the service information.Multi-level administrative management,multi-channel financial support and professional personnel development have built a guarantee mechanism for high-quality program implementation.Scientific evaluation and research activities promote continuous improvement of program implementation quality.The EHS-HV has distinctive features:it adheres to the "Family-Centered"implementation concept;emphasizes the effective connection between family,community and society;advocates a combination of structured and personalized implementation;implements multi-party cooperation program guarantee mechanism;improves a diversified research and evaluation system.These features complement each other to achieve a good systematic effect,and have important implications for the development of early family education guidance in China.China should improve policies and funding guarantees,strengthen the role of families in infant child care services;meet the needs of vulnerable families,rely on high-quality home visiting programs to promote policy implementation;cultivate professional home visitors,standardize qualification access and improve professional development mechanism;strengthen theoretical research on family infant care,and promote the sustainable development of home visiting programs.