Building Partnerships with Families Series
The goal of parent and family engagement is to work with families to build strong and effective partnerships. Explore these three resources to learn ways to strengthen relationships with families.
Family Engagement
Family engagement is a collaborative and strengths-based process through which early childhood professionals, families, and children build positive and goal-oriented relationships. It is a shared responsibility of families and staff at all levels that requires mutual respect for the roles and strengths each has to offer. Family engagement focuses on culturally and linguistically responsive relationship-building with key family members in a child’s life. These people include pregnant women and expectant families, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and other adult caregivers. It requires making a commitment to creating and sustaining an ongoing partnership that supports family well-being. It also honors and supports the parent-child relationships that are central to a child’s healthy development, school readiness, and well-being. The Office of Head Start Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework is a guide to learning how family engagement promotes positive, enduring change for children, families, and communities.
Goal-setting with Families Course
Explore this three-module course to learn about the knowledge, skills, and practices family services professionals need to engage in the family partnership process and goal setting with families.
Engaging Parents with Disabilities and Learning Differences
This resource provides information, suggested strategies, and links to resources that support Head Start staff in their efforts to engage parents and caregivers with disabilities and learning differences thoughtfully and intentionally.
Overview of the Family Services Role in Head Start Programs
This resource offers an introductory guide that describes the key responsibilities, skills, and competencies of the family services staff in their journey with families and children in the program.
Understanding the Foundations of the Home Visitor Role
This webinar explores the foundations of home visiting and your role as a home visitor. Whether you are new to the role or a seasoned veteran, this video explores resources and strategies to support your work.
Family Services Managers’ Seasonal Program Planning Tool
Family services managers can use this tool as a road map to plan and organize family services tasks and activities throughout the program year.
Building Partnerships with Families Course
Take this learning course on the Individualized Professional Development (iPD) Portfolio to improve your knowledge and practices about building strong, strengths-based partnerships with families.
Measuring What Matters Learning Series
Explore this nine-module course to learn more about using data to enhance your work with children and families using the Measuring What Matters resources.
Engaging Families of Children with Disabilities
Learn how to effectively partner with families of children with disabilities. This partnership not only promotes children’s learning and development, but also supports family learning, advocacy, and leadership skills.
Parent Tips for Effective Family Engagement
Programs can use this resource, created in partnership with parents, to guide the development of their family engagement strategies and parent leadership opportunities.