The National Home Visiting and Family Engagement Centre was established in 2020, to supports organisations across Ireland who want to replicate our home visiting and family support programmes. With the the establishment and engagement with the National Home Visiting Programme in Tusla and ongoing development of National Model of Home Visiting as part of the First 5 Government Strategy for Babies & Young Children, ELI’s National Home Visiting and Family Engagement Centre is at a time of transition as it advances nationally and future consolidation.
The intention is to maintain our previous twin-track ‘cautious expansion’ approach of ensuring that ELI has the resources to support any new activities, while continuing to maintain our existing commitments and the quality of governance, provision, and research. Our ambition is that the 10,812 babies born into poverty each year in Ireland get the support they need to flourish.
ELI’s Strategic Objectives are:
- Secure multi annual funding to support the National Office as a centre of excellence.
- Development and expansion of National Home Visiting & Family Support Centre to support growth, maintain strong support for partner sites and ensure consistent high quality programme delivery nationally.
- Sustainable funding for local partner organisations to deliver the programme in their area.
- Contribution and adaptation to national policy development in relation to home visiting models and data frameworks by deepening and broadening our engagement with key strategic national partners, building on key learnings and successes from existing partnership.
- Adaptation to national data frameworks and further development of ELI's impact management framework to track and highlight short-, medium- and long-term outcomes from nationwide programme delivery.
- Sustainable growth of ELI's suite of national programmes.
- Systemic communication with local sites, parents and other services and agencies working with families along with national stakeholders.
National Centre is a focal point for knowledge management, capacity-building, communication and influencing in relation to educational disadvantage, access and ELI’s growing expertise in supporting other communities to deliver high-quality Home Visiting programmes, in line with the Irish Government’s First 5 A Whole-of-Government Strategy for Babies, Young Children and their Families 2019-2028. The overall goal is to capture new knowledge and practices in these areas and disseminate them locally, nationally and internationally. It supports and learns from ELI’s work in Dublin Docklands and Inner City and uses it as an example of best practice from which other communities can learn.
At present, National Centre supports a combination of the following activities:
- Scaling up sustainable models of Home Visiting programmes across Ireland.
- Research and innovation in response to quality assurance and ever-changing contexts.
- Building partnerships to increase influence and impact.
- Sustaining and developing the portfolio of Dublin’s Inner-City Programmes.
National Parent-Child Home Visiting and Family Engagement
Developing and scaling up sustainable models of Home Visiting programmes across Ireland so that the 10,812 babies born into poverty each year in Ireland get the support they need to thrive in education, career and life is a key priority for ELI's National Centre. To achieve this, we have developed a National Home Visiting Support Centre, which has the capacity to support the delivery of high-quality evidence-based sustainable models of Home Visiting and innovative emerging future-orientated family home-based learning across Ireland. While a lot of progress has been made, it is a complex task in an ever-changing policy and societal context to ensure that the structures, processes and training to enable high-quality governance, accountability and implementation of home visiting programmes in different organisations across Ireland are in place and working.
ParentChild+ Programme is an evidence-based early learning and parenting programme originally developed in the United States, ParentChild+ supports parents as their child's first and best teacher. Home Visitors -- trained local staff -- deliver twice-weekly, play-based sessions in families' homes using books and toys that are gifted to the family. The programme strengthens parent-child relationships, promotes language and literacy development through talk, read and play, and prepares children for school success.
ParentChild+ National
Home from Home Programme is an intensive weekly home visiting programme developed by our Home Visiting Team in Dublin's Inner City to support families with young children who may be experiencing isolation, trauma, or disadvantage in homeless-transient accommodation or International Protection Accomodation Services (IPAS). It provides tailored guidance and resources to help parents create nurturing home learning environments and access wider community supports.
Home from Home Programme National
Community Families is a universal programme that focuses on supporting families through structured home visits. It builds parental confidence, strengthens family relationships, and promotes early learning. Community Families is part of a broader national effort to provide wraparound supports and is integrated with other local services. ELI has been awarding the Lead Agency, and the programme is currently expanding throughout Ireland in 10 sites nationwide.
Community Families
My Place to Play Project in collaboration with Tusla and CYPSC. It aims to enhance parent-baby interactions and children’s physical (tummy time), emotional (sense of safety, well-being and belonging), cognitive and language development for infants living in homeless/emergency/overcrowded accommodations.
My Place to Play National
Continuous Professional Development for Home Visitors and home visiting staff continue to be at the forefront of core structures with the National Centre. The National Centre offer a suite of training for our programmes and NCI, with the support from the Rethink Ireland Innovate Fund, provides professional qualifications in Home Visiting through
- QQI Accredited Level 6 Microcredential in Core Pedagogy and Curriculum
- QQI Accredited Level 7 Microcredential in Leadership and Change Management
- Non-accredited programme-specific training and eLearning resources
Home Visiting Alliance is a collaboration of 5 Irish evidence-based early childhood home visiting programmes (Community Mothers, Infant Mental Health, Lifestart, ParentChild+, Preparing for Life) represents the collective national voice of early childhood home visiting. They promote home visiting as an essential prevention and early intervention service for children, parents and families, and contribute to policy development and implementation. Through the HVA, Home Visitors throughout Ireland gain considerable knowledge and skills from their series of online CPD webinars with the support of the Wheel Training Links Fund.
Home Visiting Alliance