Formal and Informal Policies on Preventing Violent Discipline through Home Visitation

Background: Home visiting programs build supportive, non-judgmental relationships between trained staff and at-risk parents of young children through frequent home visits in early childhood.  Although home visitation emphasizes parental independence, programs are also evaluated on specific outcome measures such as whether parents have unrealistic expectations about their child or continue using violent discipline.  Little is known about how home visiting program supervisors (who are often MSWs working in county public health departments) expect staff to address spanking.  

Method: Interviews approximately 90-120 minutes in length were conducted with 19 home visiting program administrators in a large Midwestern state.   

Analysis: Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, coded thematically, and subjected to content analysis. 

Results: Program responses to spanking were coded in four categories: 1) Strongly discourage or 2) discourage spanking; 3) neutrality in which information about spanking was presented with neither encouragement nor discouragement; and 4) non-engagement of non-abusive spanking.  Programs that strongly discouraged spanking emphasized program model and philosophy as their rationale for doing so, while those that did not engage non-abusive spanking emphasized personal choice (of both parents and staff) and as their rationale for not doing so. 

 

Conclusion: Many program supervisor responses in this sample were ambiguous on spanking prevention even though home visiting programs are directly evaluated in this area.  This study builds on previous public health social work research to suggest that prevention programs may face challenges in understanding the public health risks of non-abusive spanking and in addressing non-abusive spanking with staff.