What CHWs Need Now to Succeed at Home Visits

If your organization sends Community Health Workers (CHWs), community health representatives (CHRs) or others into people’s homes, you already know the stakes are high. A knock at the door is more than a formality. CHW home visits are a turning point. Done right, it opens a channel of trust. Done poorly, it shuts down connection before it starts.

And while it might seem like clinical knowledge or logistics would top the list of must-haves, the truth is: communication, cultural sensitivity, and confidence are what make or break a home visit.

Whether you’re scaling an outreach program or rebuilding one from scratch, here’s what CHWs really need before they set foot across a threshold.

Want to build stronger home visit skills in your CHW team? Download our free guide.

CHW Home Visits Are High-Risk, High-Reward

Home visits can deliver unmatched insight. They allow CHWs to understand clients’ daily challenges, living conditions, and personal goals in ways an office visit never could.

But there’s a flip side.

“You’re stepping into someone’s private world,” says a public health supervisor from Maryland who implemented a home visiting communication training for CHWs. “If you don’t know how to listen, how to speak with empathy, how to notice risk factors—you can do more harm than good.”

A 2018 randomized controlled trial published in Maternal and Child Health Journal backs this up. The study found that CHWs who received targeted training in communication—not clinical tasks—significantly improved their ability to support clients with sensitive issues like depression, abuse, and parenting stress. Even more compelling: those who practiced through video roleplay retained the skills long after the training ended.

The 5 Skills Every CHW Should Master Before a Home Visit

1. Active Listening

You can’t fake this. CHWs must be trained to hear beyond words. Tone, pauses, even silence matters. It’s the difference between checking a box and uncovering an unspoken crisis.

2. Cultural Intelligence

It’s not enough to be respectful. CHWs need to be curious. That means recognizing their own assumptions, adapting their approach, and knowing when to listen rather than lead.

3. Motivational Interviewing

This isn’t therapy. It’s strategy. Motivational interviewing helps CHWs ask the right questions to move clients from resistance to action without pressure or judgment.

4. Situational Awareness

Homes aren’t controlled environments. CHWs should be trained to scan for hazards (like fall risks or missing medical supplies) and handle emergent issues calmly and safely.

5. Boundary-Setting and Self-Confidence

When you’re a guest in someone’s home, professionalism matters more than ever. CHWs need to stay grounded in their role, even when conversations get personal or emotional.

What Organizations Get Wrong

Too many onboarding programs focus heavily on paperwork, reporting systems, or disease knowledge. All important, but not enough.

“The soft skills are where the real impact happens,” says a program manager who co-led a rural CHW initiative featured in the PHAB Case Study Compendium. “Our team was great at making referrals. But once we layered in training on listening and cultural awareness, the community started calling us.”

The compendium highlights health departments and agencies nationwide that successfully trained CHWs for home visits, using mock visits, mentor pairings, and tailored curricula that emphasized human connection.

And it’s not just anecdotal. A systematic review protocol published in Systematic Reviews shows that multi-professional home visits (those involving coordinated teams with clear communication) can improve outcomes like quality of life, reduce emergency visits, and increase client satisfaction, especially for older adults.

Want Results? Build Skills That Stick.

If your CHW home visits don’t include training in these five core areas, you’re leaving success to chance. Instead, build a program that prepares CHWs not just to go into homes but to thrive in them.

At CHWTraining, we create training programs that go beyond checklists. We specialize in real-world readiness, blending behavioral science, adult learning principles, and years of frontline experience.