NYC Will Invest $43M/Year by 2024 to Support First-Time Parents

New Family Home Visits expects to serve 45,000 parents throughout the city.

By Jacqueline Neber February 7, 2020

First Lady Chirlane McCray revealed the city’s plan for New Family Home Visits to offer support to first-time parents throughout the five boroughs on Feb. 5. The city will invest $43 million per year by 2024 and aims to serve 45,000 parents with up to six home visits. Families will also be provided with comprehensive health education, and connections to resources that include mental health screenings for anxiety and depression, infant feeding, infant safe sleep practices, and referrals to services such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. New Family Home Visits is set to be the largest home visit program in the country.

The first borough to receive these supports will be Brooklyn—the program will launch this spring and will reach all families with their first babies by 2021. The program will “build upon investments in social emotional learning to build resilience and coping skills in young children as well as baby showers for healthy emotional development.”

“All parents in our city should have the support they need at the start of their most important journey, and we are taking an exciting new step to make that happen,” McCray said. “Home visits are proven to strengthen bonds between parents and their babies, lower the risk for maternal anxiety and depression, and support healthy brain development during a crucial time. We have made it our mission to support New York City’s working families, and we are grateful to our coalition of partners who will help us get this done.”

New Family Home Visit services will specifically include:

Identifying each family’s strengths and needs, including in the area of mental health, that will culminate from up to six home visits, a follow-up phone call, and doula support for a select subset of families. Home visits will begin prenatally and continue until babies are two months old. Community-based organizations will also reach out to families
Creating a citywide referral system that will match families with supports they need and enable to Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to monitor outcomes
Using private-public partnerships to develop 7 models of home visiting support for families, which will run prenatally until children are two years old

Based on evidence already gathered from existing home visiting programs, investments in early childhood education, and health care programs, the city expects “a plus-20 percent increase in cognitive development at age 2 for families served and overall reductions in health care use and public assistance and an increase in labor earnings. Furthermore, the Health Department expects a 29 percent reduction in pre-term births, a 28 percent reduction in hypertension, and a 39 percent increase in safe sleep practices.”

For more information on New Family Home Visits and when the program might roll out in your neighborhood, head to the city’s official website.