New Mexico Early Childhood Education and Care Department receives $5.6M Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting Grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration

Maternal, infant and early childhood homevisiting grant program - annotation (program infrastructure and state leadership): the New Mexico Early Childhood Education And Care Department (ececd) serves as the lead entity overseeing local implementing agencies (lias) and administering a coordinated, statewide home visiting system. Ececd ensures the delivery of evidence-based services and provides core infrastructure, including data systems, workforce development, and continuous quality improvement supports. Through this system, New Mexico promotes improved child development, increased school readiness, and strengthened caregiver capacity. Ececd also advances cross-sector collaboration with state agencies and community-based organizations to increase access, awareness, and family engagement. Problem (needs assessment and priority populations): ececd utilizes data-driven processes to identify communities with elevated risk factors associated with poor maternal and child health outcomes, including economic instability, limited access to prenatal care, and adverse early childhood experiences. While home visiting services are beneficial for all families, New Mexico prioritizes services for eligible at-risk populations to ensure equitable access and impact. Services are provided from the prenatal period through age five, addressing critical windows for intervention. Home visiting supports early entry into prenatal care, healthy pregnancies, and positive birth outcomes, while mitigating risks associated with child maltreatment, developmental delays, and poor health outcomes. Purpose (use of funds and evidence-based framework): New Mexico leverages maternal, infant, and early childhood home visiting (miechv) funding to implement evidence-based home visiting models with fidelity and to strengthen the infrastructure required for effective service delivery. Investments include data management systems, performance measurement, and ongoing professional development to ensure alignment with miechv benchmark areas. The state is committed to a coordinated, prenatal-to-five system of care that improves outcomes across maternal health, child development, and family well-being. Ececd partners with the university of New Mexico to support data integration, evaluation, and continuous quality improvement efforts. Goals and objectives (aligned with miechv benchmark areas): local implementing agencies deliver evidence-based home visiting services designed to impact miechv benchmark domains, including maternal and newborn health, child development and school readiness, and family economic self-sufficiency. Goal 1: improve maternal and child health outcomes by increasing early and continuous engagement in home visiting services for pregnant individuals and families with children birth through age five. Objective: lias will identify, recruit, and enroll priority populations, ensuring timely access to prenatal and early childhood services. Goal 2: enhance early identification of risks and needs through comprehensive screenings and referrals. Objective: enrolled families will receive standardized screenings for prenatal health, developmental delays, and caregiver well-being, with appropriate referrals and follow-up services. Approach (service delivery and model implementation): New Mexico will continue to implement evidence-based models, including nurse-family partnership (nfp) and parents as teachers (home visiting model) (pat), and will expand its continuum of care by incorporating healthy families america (hfa). The addition of hfa strengthens the state’s capacity to serve diverse family needs and risk levels, enhancing overall system responsiveness and impact. Through the FY 2026 ncc base and matching grant, services will be delivered in doÑa ana, otero, roosevelt, curry, luna, hidalgo, bernalillo, valencia, rio arriba, and sandoval counties, with a proposed expansion to grant county, New Mexico based on identified need and service gaps. New Mexico is committed to full utilization of funded capacity and will implement