Caregivers’ and interventionists’ perceptions of a child-centered home visitation intervention

Abstract

Home visitation is an intervention approach for families at risk of poor child outcomes. Negative outcomes include malnutrition, the risk of unintentional injuries, and child maltreatment, to mention a few. The effectiveness, appropriateness, and feasibility of Home Visitation Programmes (HVPs) remain under-researched in middle- to low-income settings. This study constitutes one component of a formative evaluation of a child-centred home visitation intervention in a low-income South African community. The aim of the study was to explore caregivers’ and interventionists’ perceptions of the content and delivery of the intervention. To this end the study employed qualitative methods, which included seven focus groups with caregivers and interventionists. The data were thematically analysed upon which four themes emerged namely human agency, accessibility to the intervention, attributes of the intervention, and safety-health behaviour, and are presented according to the Process–Person–Context–Time model. This study contributes to the science and praxis on conducting evidence-based home visitation interventions in a resource-constrained setting.