Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY)

• Curriculum: The HIPPY curriculum is designed to help parents of children ages 2-5 years be confident in their role as their child’s first teacher. Parents receive weekly support from their home visitor and engage in activities in four subject areas: literacy and language, math and science, motor development, and social-emotional growth. For each year of curriculum, the families receive 30 weeks of activities, 9 storybooks, and 20 manipulative shapes. 
• Role Play: HIPPY coordinators and home visitors lead participating parents/caregivers in role play activities each week. The parent/caregiver does the activities with their child after the session ends.
• Coordinators and Home Visitors: HIPPY is delivered by home visitors who are representative of the communities they serve and completed the HIPPY program themselves. A professional coordinator is responsible for recruiting parents/caregivers, hiring and training home visitors, organizing parent group meetings, and developing enrichment activities. Home visitors and coordinators meet weekly to discuss the previous week’s activities, share their experiences, and role play the upcoming week’s materials/activities.
• Home Visits and Group Meetings: Home visits provide parents/caregivers with the materials they need to work with their child on developmentally appropriate activities. Group meetings provide social support for parents/caregivers and allow participants to share their experiences. These meetings are led by the home visitor and program coordinator.

English, Spanish

Home Visits: In-person.

Group Meetings: Families alternate between home visiting and group meetings. Group meetings may be provided in-person or online. Home visits are delivered in-person.

Home Visits: Once a week for 30 weeks and up to 3 years (while the child is 2-5 years old). A dosage of 2 years is the minimum recommended. Because HIPPY is not based on mastery of the curriculum, retention is the primary indicator of quality and completion. HIPPY requires that at least 80% of participants remain in the program for 26 weeks for the program to be considered complete. Each home visit lasts 1 hour, during which they work on role-playing the curricula activities with the parents (the child(ren) are not involved). The parents’ homework is to then role play the activities with their children at least 5 days week. 

Group meetings: At least 6 times a year. 

For each year of curriculum, the families receive 30 weeks of activities, 9 storybooks, and 20 manipulative shapes.

Materials: Required materials include home visiting supplies that are needed for the program and not always found in the home (e.g., coffee stirrers, sandpaper, etc.). 

Space: An office with basic furnishings and computer capabilities is required. A location for the group meetings is also necessary.

Coordinator: Responsible for recruiting parents/caregivers, hiring and training home visitors, organizing parent group meetings, and developing enrichment activities. Must have at least a bachelor's degree. One coordinator can serve a maximum of 150-180 families.

Home Visitors: Typically have a background in early education. They live in the community they serve and work with the same families over the course of their three years in the program. They are also former HIPPY parents and therefore familiar with the model. Educational requirements are determined by the local partnership implementing HIPPY. The home visitors are also part of weekly training opportunities to make sure they can serve their families the best. Home visitors typically serve 10-15 families, but some serve upwards of 18-20 families.

NCPC strongly recommends staff receive training in the Standards of Quality for Family Support and Strengthening. Contact Prevent Child Abuse North Carolina | PCANC (preventchildabusenc.org) or National Family Support Network for more information, training and certification.

HIPPY US trains coordinators nationally who are then able to train the home visitors on a weekly basis. New program coordinators are trained through HIPPY for one week prior to the start of the program (annual preservice training).

The coordinator role plays the activities with the home visitors before they complete it with a practice child and then take it into the home.

The annual preservice training is divided into two parts: 

1. A self-learning, self-guided reading, online course structure (includes history, background, research). 
2. An in-person component and it involves demonstrating the home visitor training to reflective supervision, evaluation requirements, mapping out the community resources, setting up the advisory board for HIPPY.

After the preservice training, trainees attend 4 webinars as opportunities to focus on questions. These webinars occur at the 2-week, 4-week, 6-week, and 8-week points after completing the annual preservice training. Each webinar lasts approximately 60 minutes.

Every new coordinator is assigned a national trainer. Program support is also offered during the first three years of implementation. 

“The national office provides support for program start-up, training, and technical assistance to sites, curriculum development/enhancement, national data collection, outreach, and advocacy and engages in collaboration with national and international partners.”