Growing and Changing

When my daughter was 4 years old one time I told her "I thought you didn't like broccoli" and she answered "Mama, I'm growing and changing"! So adorable! Well sometimes it seems like we adults don't grow and change so much, but it's not true! Last year we developed an instrument to measure the growth and changes in our home visitors over their year of service with us. It's called the "Know and Grow Checklist" and it measures how comfortable they feel with various skills and knowledge at the begining, middle and end of the program year. A few posts ago I shared their gains in the areas of organizational skills and flexibility. Another area of gains was in Communication, such an important skill in any job and even moreso in HIPPY where home visitors work with a group of families with unique interests, needs, challenges and personalities. We found that at the begining of the year, only 31% of our home visitors strongly agreed that they felt comfortable effectively communicating with others, by the end of year 44% feel strongly competent in communication.

PIC: a home visitor (r) and parent (l) in Houston, 2008-2009 program year