Strength-Based Program Profiles In Early Head Start Home Visiting: Associations with Infants’ and Toddlers’ Social-Emotional Competence and Behavior Problems

Background and Purpose: Social-emotional (SE) competence is a key component of early childhood development, yet children in families experiencing economic hardship face stressors that may undermine caregiver responsivity and contribute to disparities in early SE development. Early Head Start (EHS) addresses these challenges through home visiting (HV) services that provide relationship-based support and connect families to resources. Although prior research has identified EHS program strengths (e.g., positive parent-staff relationship), less is known about how multiple program strengths co-occur and how these configurations relate to child SE development. Focusing on a single program characteristic may overlook how relational, practice-based, and organizational factors jointly shape child outcomes. Accordingly, this study aimed to identify profiles of EHS HV program strengths and examine their associations with young children’s SE development, with implications for reducing developmental disparities.

Methods: Data were drawn from the 2022 EHS Family and Children Experiences Survey, a nationally representative study of families enrolled in EHS programs. The analytic sample included families enrolled in EHS HV programs (N = 425; non-Hispanic White [28%], non-Hispanic Black [9%], Hispanic [55%], and other [8%]). Five indicators captured EHS HV program strengths: working alliance with parents, HV practice quality (observational), organizational functioning (e.g., communication, staff cohesion), workplace stress (reverse-coded), and program climate (e.g., assessment of leadership). Child SE development was assessed using both parent- and staff-reported SE competence and behavior problems. Factor mixture modeling was conducted using a manual three-step maximum likelihood procedure to determine the optimal number of profiles. Differences in child outcomes across profiles were tested using the Step3 Bolck-Croon-Hagenaars method.

Results: Five profiles were identified: 1) “Multiple strengths” (high program climate, low workplace stress, high working alliance [29.4%]), 2) “Program climate strengths” (high program climate, low workplace stress, lower-than-average HV practice quality, moderate-to-low working alliance [24.1%]), 3) “Strengths with families” (low program climate & organizational functioning, but high working alliance [21.8%], 4) “Manageable work climate” (average program climate, workplace stress, organizational functioning, but low working alliance [13.4%]), and 5) “Struggling in support & relations (low program climate, organizational functioning, working alliance [11.2%]). Pairwise comparisons revealed that children in the “Strengths with families” profile showed higher levels of both parent-reported competence (W(1)= 4.93, p = .027) and lower parent-reported problems (W(1)= 5.06, p = .025) than children in the “Manageable work climate” profile, while children in the “Struggling with support & relations” profile had lower staff-reported competence than similar children in both the “Strengths with families” (W(1)= 6.84, p = .009) and “Multiple strengths” (W(1)= 5.65, p = .017) profiles.

Conclusion and Implications: Findings underscore that EHS HV programs are characterized by heterogeneity in organizational climate, workforce stress, and relational processes. Home visitors generally work in supportive environments and show strong relationships with families. Although a few differences in children’s outcomes emerged across profiles, those observed were primarily between profiles characterized by variation in working alliance. These findings underscore the importance of supporting home visitors in maintaining high-quality relationships with families, while attending to organizational conditions that may facilitate or constrain these relational processes.