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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.
Explore this four-module course on the Individualized Professional Development (iPD) Portfolio to enhance your knowledge base, clarify expectations, and provide strategies to perform family services effectively.
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.
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.
Family services managers can use this tool as a road map to plan and organize family services tasks and activities throughout the program year.
Review the key systems that provide the foundation for family and community engagement and support well-organized systems within programs.
Explore the family services manager’s role in two Head Start systems: the PFCE Framework and the Management Systems Wheel.
Explore how the family services manager helps programs provide the comprehensive services that can contribute to positive outcomes for the children and families in your program.
Family service managers can make use of these fillable seasonal planning worksheets to meet the needs of their program and staff and track work efficiently.
These supplemental materials to support the professional growth of the family services manager and their team.
This glossary provides family services professionals with definitions of the most common acronyms used in the field. It is not an official Head Start glossary.
HeadStart.gov
official website of the Administration for Children and Families
