Comparison of the home environment of children who participated in an early intervention program - “PROD”, with controls, at 5 years of age

This paper presents the evaluation of the Home environment of children exposed to an early intervention program from birth to two years, which took place at the Mother and Child Health Clinic of the Department of Social Medicine. The study population consisted of 36, five year old children exposed to the program and 36 individually matched controls. The home environment was assessed by Caldwell's HOME Inventory scale. The scores of both controls and exposed children were higher than those of Caldwell's sample. No statistically significant difference in the Home Inventory score was noted between controls and exposed children, but the difference in the HOME score was negligible between the upper and lower maternal education sub-groups in the exposed group whereas in the controls a larger gap was noted. In a previous study, statistical differences were found in the HOME scores between exposed and control children. Lack of statistical difference in the present study is attributed to the general increase in knowledge of parents toward the importance of enriching the home environment and the contribution of the home to the development of their children.