Better outcomes can be achieved by meeting families where they are, as opposed to traditional home visits, says Sarah Holmes…
I love home visits. I’ve always felt incredibly fortunate to be welcomed into the homes of our new families.
However, I’ve come to realise that, too often, these visits are shaped around what the setting needs: what we think we need to tell families and what we think we need to find out.
There’s a risk that home visits can simply transmit information and become more of a tick list than a conversation, serving the setting more than the child and their family.
There are two key tensions at the heart of traditional home visits. First, as educators, we arrive with the weight of the institution behind us. We may not intend to wield power, but it’s there – in our job titles and our roles.
Second, we each bring our own biases. Shaped by our life experiences, values, and expectations, we may unconsciously make judgements about a home.
One way to address these issues is to reconsider the space in which we meet families. What happens when we step outside the home to share experiences together?
Children’s lives aren’t contained just in their home and setting; instead they’re lived in parks, community centres, shops, and streets.
These offer rich opportunities to meet children and families in more neutral environments where our attention can be drawn to something previously hidden or overlooked.
I’ve found that informal spaces like parks or cafes can gently flatten the hierarchy. When we’re not sitting in someone’s living room with a folder in hand, the tone of the interaction shifts.
Conversations can flow more easily. There’s more space for play, laughter, and observation. At times, we can also step back and allow space for children and families to take the lead.
Recently, I explored another valuable alternative: walking with children and families from home to the setting.
This simple act flipped the dynamic. The child became the guide, leading me along their route, showing me the world from their perspective. I was the learner, and they were the expert.
It was a joyful, revealing process and gave me a wealth of insights about them, their family and the wider community, including:
It also offered much more relaxed, natural opportunities to talk with families as we walked together.
It is easy to treat transition as a single home visit, before a child starts. Instead, we need to rethink transition as a process that unfolds across weeks and months, in many forms and places.
It may start with a traditional home visit, but it’s worth returning to it later in the year.
Here are some questions we find helpful in our setting:
Midway through the year is also a good time to consider how families engaged with our initial transition process.
Who was unable to access home visits or settling-in sessions? What barriers did they experience? Did we offer alternative options?
Forging connections between a setting and families isn’t a one-size-fits-all experience. Nor does it need to happen at home, or take place just once.
Repeated visits after relationships have been established open up new opportunities for shared experiences, renewed relationships and collaboration between settings and communities.
If we reimagine home visits as opportunities for connection rather than just information collection, we can create a space for deeper, more respectful relationships.
Sarah Holmes is an Early Years teacher. Read her guide, Rethinking Home Visits, produced in partnership with Tapestry, the childhood education platform.
