Comprehensive, high-quality leadership in US home-visiting: Understanding the key qualities, skills and characteristics needed

Background: Maternal and child health home-visiting programmes provide families with home visits conducted by trained professionals. While this is the essence of the programme, there are many other aspects to the successful implementation of programming. A home-visiting programme's leadership is a key driver of implementation. Aims: The purpose of the paper was to describe the key qualities, skills and characteristics of high-quality leadership in home-visiting. Methods: Using a series of qualitative interviews with local experts, home-visiting programme leaders and home visitors ( n =11) in a small, Southern US state, the authors asked participants to describe and define key qualities, skills and characteristics for home-visiting programme leaders. The authors analysed data using deductive and inductive approaches. Findings: Results included a participant-confirmed list of 17 key qualities, skills and characteristics of leaders, as well as an emergent theme around the need for support for home-visiting programme leaders. These findings reflect the comprehensive nature of leadership in home-visiting programmes. Conclusions: Continued work is needed to conceptualise and measure these concepts, as well as promote professional development among home-visiting programme leaders to drive high-quality programme implementation.