Parents as Teachers

Parents as Teachers (PAT) is a national, evidence-based home visiting model designed to ensure young children are healthy, safe, and ready to learn.
PAT recognizes parents as a child’s first, and most important, teacher. PAT’s mission is to provide the information, support, and encouragement parents need to help their children develop optimally during the crucial early years of life.

The cornerstone of Parents as Teachers is the home visit. Here in Allegheny County, each family is partnered with a parent educator who gets to know the family, recognizing their strengths and working with the family to set goals and identify areas to work on. The home visitor models appropriate parenting techniques and teaches parents about child development. This individual attention helps parents become more confident in their parenting abilities and better able to manage stress, factors proven to prevent child abuse and neglect.

Home visiting services are one part of a continuum of support for families of young children. The other components of PAT are: group connections, child screenings, and a resource network.

Together, these four components create a cohesive package of services with four primary goals:

1. Increase parent knowledge of early childhood development and improve parenting practices.
2. Provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues.
3. Prevent child abuse and neglect.
4. Increase children’s school readiness and school success.

Effectiveness of the Parents as Teachers Model

Parents as Teachers improves the lives of the families who use it, leading to healthier, happier children and more capable parents. Studies on PAT’s impact have been conducted by state governments, school districts, private foundations, universities, and organizations. The studies, which have been published in peer-reviewed journals and together incorporate data from more than 16,000 children and parents, show that PAT is effective at strengthening families and preventing child abuse and neglect.

Following is a brief summary of key research findings in relation to each of the four primary goals of Parents as Teachers:

Goal 1: Increase parent knowledge of early childhood development and improve parenting practices

• Parents reported learning how to interact with their child more effectively, gaining a better understanding of child development, and spending more time with their children.
• Parents engage more in conversation and are more likely to promote reading in the home.
• Parents are more likely to take an active role in their children’s schooling through enrolling them in preschool, attending parent-teacher conferences, volunteering in the classroom, and helping with homework.

Goal 2: Provide early detection of developmental delays and health issues

• Approximately 40,000 children per year are identified with a developmental delay or problems with vision, hearing, or health (including mental health).
• Children are more likely to be fully immunized.

Goal 3: Prevent child abuse and neglect

• Parents have significantly fewer cases of abuse and neglect.
• Teen mothers showed greater improvement in knowledge about discipline, organized their home environment in a more appropriate way, and were less likely to be subjects of child abuse investigations when also receiving case management.
• Children are less likely to be treated for injury.

Goal 4: Increase children’s school readiness and school success

• Children score higher on measures of achievement, language ability, social development, prosocial behavior, persistence in task mastery, and other cognitive abilities.
• Children score higher on kindergarten readiness tests and standardized measures of reading, math, and language in elementary grades.
• Parents as Teachers combined with quality preschool education reduced the achievement gap between poor and more advantaged children at kindergarten entry.

Learn more about the PAT evidence-based model.

Visit the Parents as Teachers website.