Is the Whole Greater than the Sum of Its Parts? Impacts on Child Outcomes from a Home-Visiting Parenting Program and its Interaction with Preschool

This study evaluates the effects of a weekly home-visiting parenting program designed to enhance parent-child engagement with educationally-enriching activities and its potential interaction with children’s participation in state-funded preschool. Utilizing a comprehensive dataset linked across various administrative sources, we employed a quasi-experimental approach featuring inverse probability weighting regression adjustment and nearest neighbor matching to assess outcomes as measured at or leading up to kindergarten entry. We focused on a cohort of 2,000 diverse children born between 2012 and 2016, aged three and four at the intervention’s onset. Participation in the home-visiting program was associated with significant positive effects on children’s cognitive skills, IDEA Part B service uptake, and the likelihood of reported child maltreatment, which persisted after adjusting for state-funded preschool participation. We found no statistical evidence of interactions between the program and preschool, underscoring the program’s additive contributions to early childhood development and family well-being.