Child First was a home visiting program for families with children from birth through age 5 where caregivers were experiencing challenges with their own mental health or their children’s behavior problems; it provided both care coordination and a trauma-informed intervention aimed at promoting executive functioning and healthy family relationships. Care coordination involved a home visitor connecting families to available and relevant resources. The trauma-informed intervention component, most commonly Child-Parent Psychotherapy, aimed at promoting healthy family relationships and promoting executive functioning.
Families received twice-weekly touchpoints, either in-person or virtually, with a care coordinator and clinician during the first month of enrollment and weekly visits for the remainder of the intervention, which lasted 8 months on average.
The program was evaluated at nine Child First sites in Connecticut and one site in North Carolina.
Child First was a home visiting program for families with children from birth through age 5 where caregivers were experiencing challenges with their own mental health or their children’s behavior problems; it provided both care coordination and a trauma-informed intervention aimed at promoting executive functioning and healthy family relationships.