Predicting home-visiting program completion based on mothers' socioeconomic characteristics and program perceptions

Early childhood home-visiting programs are a widely established practice across North America, which aim to improve child and family outcomes for young families who require extra support. A common issue across all home-visiting programs is poor retention. Over the past few decades, researchers have been investigating various reasons for why a family may enroll in a home-visiting program but not complete it. In Prince Edward Island, the Best Start Program is a province-wide program that also experiences family attrition. The purpose of this study was to use maternal socioeconomic and program perception indicators to predict participation in the Best Start home-visiting program. A descriptive and retrospective, correlational design was used to evaluate maternal participation in the Best Start program from June 2017 to March 2018. Maternal participation was defined as the ratio of completed to expected home visits. Multiple linear regression was used to analyze predictors that were previously collected through a routine parent survey that is administered by the home-visiting program. The results indicated that socioeconomic indicators may predict how many home visits a mother will complete compared to how many are expected. Residing region, Prince County in particular, was associated with higher participation. By analyzing how maternal socioeconomic and program perception factors impact home-visiting participation, these findings provide a greater understanding of potential program participation influencers, as relevant to this particular sample in Prince Edward Island.