2023 Oklahoma Statutes
Title 10. Children
§10-601.81. Home visiting programs – Requirements – Objectives – Annual report.

A. The departments that provide home-visiting services may adopt and promulgate rules by which the home-visiting program shall operate.

B. The departments shall provide a framework for service delivery and accountability across all home-visiting programs to promote a continuum of care that targets families at the greatest risk for experiencing adverse childhood outcomes.

C. A home-visiting program shall provide face-to-face visits by specially trained parent educators to provide home-based family support services.

D. The departments shall ensure home-visiting programs work in partnership to serve children, thereby maximizing the opportunities for families to receive services that best fit their needs.

E. A home-visiting program shall achieve two or more of the following:

1. Improve prenatal, maternal, infant or child health outcomes, including, but not limited to, indicators such as preterm birth rates, substance abuse and tobacco use;

2. Reduce entry into the child welfare system;

3. Improve positive parenting and relationship skills;

4. Improve parental self-sufficiency, including increased employment and educational attainment;

5. Improve children's readiness to succeed in school; and

6. Improve children's social-emotional, cognitive and language and physical development, including efforts at early identification of delays.

F. The departments shall work with community partners, researchers, model developers, program providers and interested private entities to develop processes that provide for a greater ability to collaborate, as well as share best practices and information as necessary and appropriate.

G. When the departments authorize funds through payments, contracts or grants that are used for home-visiting programs, they shall include language regarding home visiting in the funding agreement contract or grant that is consistent with the provisions of the Family Support Accountability Act.

H. State and local agencies administering home-visiting programs as defined in this act, providers of home-visiting services and experts in home-visiting program evaluation shall collaborate with the Early Childhood Advisory Council created in Section 640.1 of Title 10 of the Oklahoma Statutes to:

1. Jointly develop an outcomes measurement plan which includes indicators related to the objectives established in subsection E of this section in order to monitor outcomes for children and families receiving home-visiting programs and determine the efficiency of agency program implementation;

2. Complete and submit the outcomes measurement plan for state-funded home-visiting programs by January 1, 2016, to the Governor, the Legislature, the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth and the Early Childhood Advisory Council and complete and submit an updated plan every subsequent five (5) years; and

3. Develop a process for collecting and reporting outcomes measures to maintain privacy and security.

I. Beginning December 1, 2017, and annually thereafter, the departments shall allocate resources to collaborate with the Early Childhood Advisory Council to submit an annual outcomes report to the Governor and the Legislature.

J. The annual outcomes report shall include:

1. Achieved outcomes as agreed upon and described in the previously submitted outcomes measurement plan pursuant to subsection H of this section for all state-funded family support programs;

2. Combined program data regarding:

• a.the cost per family served,
• b.the number of families served,
• c.demographic data on families served, and
• d.the number and type of programs that the departments have funded; and

3. Recommendations for quality improvements and future program investments.

Added by Laws 2015, c. 199, § 2, eff. Nov. 1, 2015.