Home visitors in the Early Head Start program can make a meaningful difference in the lives of young children and families. However, the work is emotionally demanding as it requires working in communities facing poverty and other adversities. In efforts to support a strong workforce, it is important to examine home visitors’ well-being and the organizational conditions that can offset or augment the adversities of their work.

We used 2022 data collected by the Administration for Children and Families to describe the Early Head Start home visiting workforce’s mental health, job-related stress, and their perceptions of organizational supports and demands. We also examined whether factors associated with job demands and job supports relate to job satisfaction.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Our findings shed light on home visitors’ needs and what programs can do to create a supportive workplace. This information is key to strengthening the home visiting workforce.

WHAT WE FOUND

• Home visitors were satisfied with their jobs and perceived their programs as having positive organizational climates when it came to team cohesion and communication.
• Home visitors had moderate levels of workplace stress and almost half reported feeling threats to personal safety at least some of the time.
• The prevalence of clinically significant depressive symptoms among home visitors was very low, with almost 90 percent of home visitors reporting no symptoms.
• All home visitors reported having one-on-one supervision meetings—most commonly occurring monthly—and most reported having regular meetings with a coach.
• While lack of personal safety was associated with lower job satisfaction, strong team cohesion and communication in the workplace were associated with higher levels of job satisfaction.