Parents as Teachers South Carolina

The Parents as Teachers (PAT) evidence-based home visiting model is designed to ensure young children are healthy, safe, and ready to learn. The model has demonstrated successful results in increasing parent knowledge of early childhood development, improving parenting practices, providing early detection of developmental delays and health issues, preventing child abuse and neglect, and promoting young children’s healthy development and school readiness, including social-emotional and early literacy skills. Services to families are delivered by certified parent educators who emphasize parent-child interaction, development-centered parenting and family wellbeing in their work with families. PAT services include four interrelated and integrated components of the model: personal visits, group connections, screening and resource network. Together these form a dynamic package of services.

South Carolina Parents as Teachers Affiliate Programs served 3,136 children and 2,726 families in 2012 and is currently the largest home visiting model implemented in the state. South Carolina First Steps to School Readiness is the state lead for PAT and provides technical assistance, training and support to each of the states’ 63 affiliate programs.

Counties Served

Abbeville, Aiken, Allendale, Anderson, Bamberg, Barnwell, Beaufort, Berkeley, Calhoun, Charleston, Cherokee, Chester, Clarendon, Darlington, Dillon, Dorchester, Fairfield, Florence, Greenwood, Hampton, Horry, Jasper, Kershaw, Laurens, Lee, Lexington, McCormick, Marion, Marlboro, Newberry, Oconee, Pickens, Richland, Saluda, Spartanburg, Sumter, and York.

Annual Cost

~$1500 per family served

Partner Organizations

• South Carolina First Steps to School Readiness
• South Carolina Department of Education
• Local County First Steps Partnerships
• Local School Districts
• DSS
• Part C of IDEA
• Early Head Start
• Other local partners that vary by location and county

Funding Sources

Funds in SC primarily come from state and local public funds with some private and federal funds blended in

Evaluation and Outcomes

Independent evaluations have been integral to the success of the Parents as Teachers model. A range of research studies conducted by external researchers and supported by state governments, independent school districts, private foundations, universities and research organizations, and outcome data have been collected from more than 16,000 children and parents. These studies demonstrate that Parents as Teachers makes a real difference in the lives of parents and their children. The evidence that implementation of the Parents as Teachers model leads to statistically significant, positive effects for parents and children comes from rigorous research designs, including both randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental studies. The results from these studies have resulted in 7 peer-reviewed professional journal publications. For more information go to www.parentsasteachers.org.

An outside independent evaluation of South Carolina First Steps home visitation programs conducted by High Scope Educational Research Foundation in 2009, showed that Home Visitation Programs improve parenting skills among the states most at risk families with children under 5. Programs saw significant increases in their pre-and post-assessments. Overall, 54% of participants who scored at a low quality of parenting improved to a moderate quality of parenting, 44% who had moderate parenting skills moved to high quality, and 11.9% who had low quality parenting at pre-test increased their skills to high quality.

PAT SC’s Annual report for 2012 showed that immunizations in SC exceeded the PAT national rate of 82.7% at 87.6% and served a greater number of families with two or more high needs characteristics (77%) than the National rate of 56%. Overall, SC served low income families in greater numbers (84%) as compared to the National rate of 59%. 19% of the current home visiting workforce in SC has a Master’s degree and beyond as compared to the National rate of 16%. Thus, using high quality staff, Parents as Teachers South Carolina has served families with more risk factors than the national average and achieved positive results from these efforts. South Carolina’s commitment to implementation with fidelity and accountability has served as a model for other states’ efforts.

Grades Served

• Early Childhood

Contact Information

Mary Anne Mathews, mmathews@scfirststeps.org