Non-Technical Summary:
Investing in early childhood is increasingly recognized as a key policy mechanism for reducing social disadvantage. Early investment is both equitable and can generate large economic returns in adulthood. Rigorous evaluation of early intervention programs has received relatively little attention in Europe, yet given the social, economic, and cultural differences, especially with respect to welfare systems, it cannot be assumed that the findings from the seminal American studies can be replicated. Therefore, we examine the impact of an experimentally designed, five-year home visiting program in Ireland – Preparing for Life – on parenting skills and early child development. We use methods which deal with some of the common issues that arise when using a randomized controlled trial design. In particular, we take account of the small number of parents included in studies of this kind, we note and account for issues which arise when multiple outcome measures are examined, and finally, we adjust for the fact that not all parents will remain in the study for the full duration.
Preparing for Life is a community-based home visiting program which works with families from pregnancy until the children start school at age 4/5 years. The program recruited and randomized 233 pregnant women from a socioeconomically disadvantaged community in Dublin, Ireland into an intervention or control group. The intervention included regular home visits delivered by a trained mentor, as well as a separate parenting course which started when the child was 2 years old. We measured a range of parental investment measures and child cognitive, non-cognitive and physical development when the children in the intervention and control group were 6, 12, and 18 months old.
Overall, we find that the program has an impact on some dimensions of parental investment, specifically on the quality of the child’s environment and level of appropriate care provided to the child. However, the program had relatively few effects on child development. We found one effect on the child’s cognitive development at 18 months, which is driven by higher cognitive development scores among the intervention group.
This suggests that home visiting programs can be effective at offsetting deficits in parenting skills within a relatively short time frame, yet continued investment may be required to observe direct effects on child development.