Colorado Title 26.5. Early Childhood Programs and Services § 26.5-3-901. Legislative declaration

(a) Traditional methods of delivering family-strengthening service programs, which often require parents and their children to travel to a program site to access services delivered simultaneously to multiple families, often create barriers, such as limited access to transportation or creation of a stigma around receiving services, that prevent families, especially low-income families, from receiving the benefits of the services;

(b) Evidence demonstrates that voluntary, high-quality, evidence-based programs that deliver family-strengthening support services help parents and other caregivers develop the skills and confidence needed to promote their children's healthy development and learning;

(c) Home visiting is a service delivery strategy that is successfully used to deliver a wide array of high-quality, voluntary family-strengthening support services and that enables families to overcome barriers to access because the services are delivered in the home or other convenient settings, which are often selected by the family;

(d) Home visiting is a service delivery strategy that can be leveraged to provide high-quality, voluntary, family-strengthening support services to more Colorado families who have fewer resources and are exposed to risk factors that may lead to poor outcomes in child development. Using home visiting to provide these services results in a strong return on investment by improving school readiness and helping Colorado's children reach their full potential.

(e) Family-strengthening support services that are delivered through home visiting have also demonstrated improved family and child outcomes by promoting solid parent-child relationships, improving child and parental social-emotional and physical health, improving family economic security, identifying developmental delays early, providing timely child welfare intervention services, and preventing trauma and toxic stress.