Home visits use active listening and are based on principles of mutual respect and self-help.
Volunteers are encouraged to use an informal framework that:
- Provides a purpose, focus and timeframe to each home visit
- Enables parents to work at their own pace and achieve meaningful goals that make a difference to their own lives
- Enables the parent and volunteer to review the ongoing support together and celebrate the parent’s achievements.
A semi-structured approach
Volunteers are trained to use a semi-structured but non-directive approach when carrying out home visits (see session 12, module 3 in our volunteer training section). The process for each visit guides the volunteer and parent through key stages:
- What’s new since our last visit?
- Is there anything new you have noticed?
- New information to share
- People and services
- Goals and ideas
- Celebrating achievements.
The key aim is to enable each parent to take ownership of the process by exploring issues that are important to them. By developing active listening skills peer supporters learn to hold back their own opinions and avoid ‘jumping in’ to give advice. This helps parents to feel valued and understood.
This ongoing process allows parents to set, review and achieve realistic goals, gradually building self-confidence one step at a time. Through a trusting peer relationship, they come to recognise their strengths and find their own way forward. Equipping volunteers to use these strengths-based skills is a crucial part of the peer support process.
This is a particularly important time for building a volunteer’s confidence. The coordinator accompanies the volunteer on the first visit to introduce the volunteer to the pregnant woman, and then leaves at the earliest opportunity. This helps to make a comfortable and confident start to the relationship.
After the visit, encourage the peer supporter to use the ‘Reflecting on my first visit’ form (downloadable below). This creates the basis of a discussion on how the visit went, which is a great opportunity to affirm the good listening skills observed and the things they did well. Later down the line, the reflective form can also be used as evidence of learning for accreditation.
Reflecting on my first visit
Added 02/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Resources
Home visiting resources help to plan and track each parent’s journey of support during pregnancy, birth and beyond. For example, the ‘Ideas for things we could look at together’ booklets suggest a range of topics for parents to consider pre and post birth (these are downloadable below).
The visiting resources (downloadable below) help volunteers to:
- Plan and organise their visits
- Collect some key data for evaluation purposes
- Complete simple questionnaires with parents to reflect on how the support is going.
One-to-one diary sheet
Added 08/01/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Telephone record sheet
Added 08/01/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Ideas of things we could look at together - Pregnancy
Added 02/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Ideas of things we could look at together - being a parent
Added 02/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
Postnatal family booklet
Added 12/10/2021Please sign in to download this file.
Guidance for your very first home visit
Added 02/03/2020Please sign in to download this file.
'Where are we now' Questionnaire
Added 08/01/2020Please sign in to download this file.