Sieda Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visitation (MIECHV) staff attended the 2019 Child Abuse Prevention and Family Support Conference. The conference brought together over 400 professionals with a focus on improving the well-being of Iowa families.  To better assist families, family support professionals in Iowa learned valuable education that increases their knowledge, skills, and collaboration.

During this event, our Sieda MIECHV team received the “2019 Leadership Impact Award.” The award is for making the most growth, having the highest percentage of completed PICCOLO assessments, and lowest rate of refusals.

Most noteworthy is the PICCOLO assessment completions. First of all, PICCOLO is a parent and child interaction evaluation that helps the home visitors, guide the education/services we provide to the families. If a parent consents, once a year a ten-minute video is recorded of the parent and child playing with provided toys. The video is then reviewed at the state level and scored.

At first, the assessment wasn’t well received. For that reason, Sieda’s MIECHV team meet many times to create a refusal form for families not interested in the PICCOLO and work on how to better present PICCOLO to their families.

Consequently, the MIEHCV team almost doubled the completion goal for the first quarter of FY2019. The goal was 25%, and they achieved 47%. So far this year they continue to be in the lead in Iowa.

Congratulations to Sue Wolver, Angie Mach, and Robin Simmons. We are grateful for their hard work.