Home Visitor Core Competencies

Home Visitor Attributes: As you read this list, think about the characteristics, traits, beliefs, and values of a Home Visitor who is likely to be successful in working with families.

• Curious
• Values planning and organization
• Enthusiastic
• Reflective
• Non-judgmental
• Respects the invitation to be a guest in someone’s home (in-person or virtual)
• Recognizes one’s own implicit bias
• Values and appreciates cultural differences
• Trustworthy
• Empathetic
• Committed to self-care
• Creative and persistent in addressing challenges
• Well-developed personal and professional sense of identity: beliefs and values
• Believes in the importance of on-going learning in relationship to high quality services
• Committed to keeping skills up to date.
• Values collaboration and flexibility

1. Competency Area: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging: Effective Relationships with Families

Description: A Home Visitor’s understanding of and respect for a family's culture is fundamental to an effective home visiting relationship with a family. It requires confidence in the value of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging when partnering with families and caregivers. Home Visitors will practice humility and cultivate an environment of continued learning regarding culture and race.

2. Competency Area: Infant and Early Childhood Development

Description: Home Visitors understand a child's development in the context of their family's values and culture. Home Visitors partner with parents and caregivers to support and facilitate an understanding of the healthy physical, cognitive, and social emotional growth and development of their children.

3. Competency Area: Family Health and Wellness

Description: Home Visitors collaborate with parents and caregivers to identify safe and healthy practices that foster health and wellness in the context of a family’s culture and resources.

4. Competency Area: Parent-Child Interactions

Description: Home Visitors recognize the impact of the parent-child relationship on healthy physical growth and social-emotional development. Home Visitors understand that parents and caregivers are experts in their own lives and therefore, support the parent-child relationship in the context of a family’s culture and community.

5. Competency Area: Dynamics of Family Relationships

Description: Home Visitors are strength-based, and trauma informed in their interactions. They know about the impact of gender identity, culture, and religion on the community and in family systems and composition. Home Visitors partner with parents and caregivers to recognize, develop, and foster protective factors and family resiliency. Home Visitors partner with parents and caregivers to address risks and stressors that impact their family’s well-being.

6. Competency Area: Community Resources and Support

Description: Home Visitors are knowledgeable about the network of community resources and referral options available for families. Home Visitors partner with parents and caregivers to identify, access, navigate systems and advocate for themselves and their children.

7. Competency Area: Effective Home Visiting

Description: Home Visitors partner with parents and caregivers in visits to identify the family’s needs, and goals given the cultural and community context, their current circumstances, and environment in which they live. Visits are delivered in accordance with the home visiting design and practices of the program’s organization.

8. Competency Area: Continual Development and Practice

Description: Home Visitors continually learn from families, colleagues, and others. They develop an effective working relationship with their supervisor as a partner in ongoing professional development. It is essential for Home Visitors to grow in skills and abilities and to stay current: in the knowledge of research that impacts the practice of home visiting, changes in community conditions, and available resources. A commitment to ongoing learning is necessary for Home Visitors to be effective in partnerships with families.

Home Visiting Supervisor Core Competencies

Supervisor Attributes: As you read this list, think about the characteristics, traits, beliefs, and values of a Home Visiting Supervisor who is likely to be successful in working with families.

Values:

• …many forms of diversity represented by families served
• and the home visitors providing services.
• …cultural and leadership humility
• …reflection as a means of recognizing one’s own biases
• …strength based and trauma informed approaches
• …learning and growth
• …lived experience
• …many ways of knowing
• …data as a tool for improvement
• …intuition, imagination, vision
• …accountability (taking responsibility for their actions and choices)

Believes that:

• families are their own best experts
• all voices and experiences have value.
• quality home visiting makes a difference
• there are many ways to do things (flexible/adaptable)
• quality home visiting practice is informed by research and other types of evidence

1. Competency Area: Facilitating Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Description: Supervisors empower staff, families, and the community to participate in a program that is diverse, equitable, inclusive, and fosters belonging. Supervisors ensure all voices are heard including staff, families, and community. Supervisors will practice humility; cultivate and support an environment of continued learning regarding culture and race.

2. Competency Area: Supporting Home Visiting Practice

Description: Supervisors partner with the home visitor to cultivate a strength-based and trauma informed environment. The Supervisor cultivates an understanding of the influence of gender identity, culture, and religion in work with families. Providing evidence-based, evidence informed, and community defined information will assist in the development of a capable, skillful, and knowledgeable workforce.

3. Competency Area: Ethical and Quality Home Visiting Practices

Description: Supervisors work toward ethical and high-quality home visiting practices and support the home visitor as they work toward ethical and high-quality practices.

4. Competency Area: Relationship-Based Partnerships

Description: Supervisors facilitate the building of relationships to promote a positive workplace environment by listening and clarifying information with an open exchange of ideas and fostering an atmosphere of open communication. Supervisors understand the elements of an inclusive and healthy workplace environment.

5. Competency Area: Community Systems and Resources

Description: Supervisors have broad knowledge of how community systems work and create partnerships to influence referrals and the day-to-day work of the program.