Family Home Visiting

Rice County Public Health offers a variety of family home visiting services by registered nurses and family health specialists to support parents, caregivers and children.

Families are served regardless of income or insurance status, and services are provided at no cost to the family. The families we serve determine visit frequency, which can be as few as one or two visits to longer term visiting up to three years. Visits can be in person or virtual to fit the family’s needs. 

Our philosophy of home visiting is service through strength-based relationships to support and connect families to community as they desire. Outcomes of our home visiting programs include: 

  • Improved child health, including increased birth weight 
  • Improved parent-child interactions
  • Increased parent understanding of developmental milestones
  • Improved school readiness
  • Improved family self-sufficiency
  • Improved coordination of services and referrals

To sign up or to refer someone for family home visiting, fill out the Family Home Visiting Intake Form.

Public Health nurse home visits

Public Health nurses are available to make home visits for education and support related to healthy pregnancy, labor and delivery, breastfeeding and parenting. Nurses can weigh and measure your baby, teach about newborn care, nutrition, car seat safety, immunizations, infant brain development and many other parenting topics, as well as connect families to a wide variety of other community resources.

Evidence-based family home visits

We are proud to collaborate with eight other counties in the Southeast Minnesota Family Home Visiting Partnership. Through our partnership we offer families sustained home visiting. We use two evidence-based models to do this, Healthy Families America® and Maternal Early Childhood Sustained Home Visiting.

These models provide ongoing support to families with young children over a period of two to three years. The program is voluntary, and families enroll prenatally or shortly after the birth of their child. This helps ensure healthy pregnancies, positive child growth and development, and helps families receive support during pregnancy and through their child's toddler years, leading to children who arrive at kindergarten eager and ready to learn.

To learn more about family home visiting services, call 507-332-6111 and ask to speak with a member of the Family Child Health nursing staff.

Parents and children can benefit from these services available through Rice County Public Health. Refer yourself or a client.