This year, National Home Visiting Day will take place on Wednesday, October 15th, 2024.  

National Home Visiting Day is a special day that recognises the critical role home visiting programmes play in supporting families across local communities. Home visiting is a vital form of early intervention and prevention, offering a "no wrong door" approach to connecting families with the support they need. 

The Home Visiting Alliance (HVA) was established in November 2020. The HVA is a collaboration of five Irish evidence-based early childhood home visiting programmes. These groups collaborate to support parents and children throughout Ireland.  

On October 15th, the Home Visiting Alliance, in conjunction with the National Home Visiting Programme Tusla, invites you to a celebration of National Home Visiting Day. This year’s theme is “Home Visiting: Where Connection Builds Community.”  

The key messages of the day will highlight: 

• Early Relationships Matter: Loving, responsive relationships in the early years shape how children learn, feel, and connect with the world for the rest of their lives. 
• Home visiting: Empowering parents to nurture, teach, and lead in their child's development, education, and care. 
• Home is where Relationships Begin: Community is where relationships grow.  
• Evidence Based Home Visiting in early childhood: Small Investment, Big Return.  

This year’s event is being hosted at National College of Ireland’s Mayor Square campus building, and the day will begin with a performance from a local children’s choir after registration at 9am. People who work in and are interested in this sector can learn more on the event’s Eventbrite page. 

NCI’s Early Learning Initiative Area-Based Childhood 0-2.5 Years Programme aims to provide an integrated programme of intervention and support for children, their parents, and families from pre-birth to two years of age, with the focus being a home visiting service to support and nurture the relationship with children, parents, and families. The programme aims to improve children's overall development through the empowerment of parents and is designed to focus on nutrition, health care, and overall child development. On a weekly basis, for up to an hour, families will be visited in their homes by our trained Home Visitors. As the child becomes older this may move to once a month.  The Home Visitors work with the family to strengthen the parents’ skills and build self-esteem, to enable them to believe in their own capabilities and parenting skills. A weekly report is written by the Home Visitors to record the child’s development. 

You can learn more about this programme, and about the vast range of key work that ELI does every year by visiting ELI’s Homepage.  

“I look forward to seeing our colleagues, partners, and supporters to celebrate early childhood home visiting. It is a wonderful opportunity to pay tribute to our amazing Home Visitors and parents across Ireland who are ensuring the next generation have the skills, knowledge, and dispositions to thrive in education, health, career, and life.” ~ Dr Josephine Bleach, Director of NCI’s Early Learning Initiative. 

 
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