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  • Our Approach
    • Social Impact
    • Thought Partnership
    • Accessible Information
    • Commitment to Equity
  • What We Do
    • Strategy Development
    • Theory of Change
    • Evaluation
      • Advocacy & Policy Evaluation
      • Network Evaluation
      • Systems Evaluation
    • Measurements Learning Evaluation Practice (MLE)
      • MLE Development & Support
      • MLE Lab
  • About Us
    • Team
    • Board
    • Clients
    • Careers
    • Connect
  • Blog
  • Publications

About ORS Impact

Since 1989, ORS Impact works alongside renowned social impact leaders, supporting their work to accomplish their missions.


Parent Child Home Program

PCHP is a home visiting program launched in 1965, that aims to strengthen families and increase school readiness for young children through a culturally appropriate program model that promotes literacy, language, and social-emotional development by way of positive parenting and parent-child verbal interaction. 

 

In the two-year program, families are enrolled when children are around two years old and receive two 30-minute home visits per week for 23 weeks a year from a trained home visitor, for a total of 92 visits.  Home visitors, who share language and cultural backgrounds with the families, use a nondirective approach by modeling behaviors that enhance children's development.  Visits are structured around the use of Verbal Interaction Stimulus Materials (VISM)-high-quality, developmentally appropriate toys or books-which are brought by the home visitors and left as gifts for the families to use on their own.  

Nationwide, PCHP has been evaluated by several independent organizations during its 50-year history and locally, ORS Impact has been evaluating the program since it was first implemented in King County in 2006.  The evaluation assesses changes in parents and children at four-time points during the two-year program: baseline, end of Year 1, beginning of Year 2, and end of program.  

In 2016, we also conducted an evaluation of long-term outcomes across a diverse cohort of PCHP graduates and a series of six focus groups with parents who had participated in PCHP in King County.  The long-term outcomes evaluation examined the performance of PCHP graduates against a demographically matched comparison group on standardized assessments of school readiness, English proficiency, and Grade 3 academic performance.  The focus groups were intended to explore the parent experience of the program, particularly their perception of program recruitment and retention, school readiness, and any beneficial effects the program had on their non-enrolled children and family members. 


Contact us to learn more about our approach. 

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"Parent-Child Home Program (PCHP) has worked with ORS Impact for many years because they produce high quality work that provides valuable insights into our work with PCHP families and guidance on continuing to improve our services.  Our goal is to prepare vulnerable children and families for school and life success, and ORS Impact’s evaluations support and enhance this focus on positive social impact." 

 -Sarah E. Walzer, CEO Parent-Child Home Program



 
1100 Olive Way, Suite 1350, Seattle, WA 98101
206.728.0474     ors@orsimpact.com