Parent & family engagement strategies are integrated into all systems & program services to support family well-being & promote children’s learning & development. Programs are encouraged to develop innovative two-generation approaches that address prevalent needs of families across their program that may leverage community partnerships or other funding sources.
Regulations
HS Performance Standard 1302.50-1302.53
Parent involvement & family engagement strategies are integrated into all systems & program services to support family well-being & promote children’s learning & development.
Inform Parents
Family Advocate distributes the following information to parents each month:
Family Activity Calendars promote parent involvement by providing ideas for at home educational activities.
DRDP questionnaires involve parents in their child's school readiness & assists teachers with observations
Various health & safety information is shared with parents to support their family's well being
Tools:
Family Summary & Partnership Agreement
Document utilized by Family Advocates to determine how program staff can support families in pursuing their goals & obtain family engagement data that will measure progress and drive continuous improvement.
Tools:
Volunteers
We encourage parents to volunteer in our classrooms
Volunteers who will interact with children must meet the volunteer requirements
Parents who remain in the classroom for a short period of time solely for the purpose of assisting their child with transition or who support the site but do not engage with children are not subject to the volunteer requirements
Volunteers must be healthy to be present in the facility
Tools:
Parent Surveys
Family Advocates ask parents to complete a Parent Meeting Survey upon enrollment to find out what topics they are interested in learning about, their schedule, interest in volunteering & interest in becoming an officer of the Parent Center Committee.
In addition, annually parents will receive both the State and Head Start program surveys. The purpose these surveys are to evaluate how the program helped them to support their child’s learning & development, & meet their family’s needs. Data from the annual surveys are used for goal planning.
Tools:
Parent Meetings
Monthly Parent Committee Meeting (Center Parents)
Family Advocate plans & facilitates monthly parent committee meetings at the center, based on survey data. Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors is our adopted curriculum used at the meetings.
Tools:
Quarterly Parent Advisory Committee (All SCOE Parents)
GO Director facilitates the quarterly Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) meetings held at a central location. At these meeting parents may provide input on what they would like to see in the program.
Tools:
Policy Council (Grantee Program Wide)
Grantee staff plans & facilitates the Policy Council.
Tools:
COPA Procedures
Document & record family services.
COPA is used to record all of the services staff provide to our families. The data entered is used for planning & reporting outcomes to the Office of Head Start on the Program Information Reports, also known as the PIR.
Tools:
Parent Meeting Binder
Family Advocate maintains all meeting records in the Parent Meeting Binder including:
Parent Committee schedule, compiled surveys, copy of receipts, meeting agenda, minutes, sign-in sheet, evaluation and handouts, including any community resources distributed at the meeting·
Parent Advisory Committee confirmation & data sheets
Site specific Policy Council representative confirmation sheet
Tools:
Monitoring
A Grantee monitoring review will be held every program year. In addition, self-monitoring must be documented and occur as follows:
ERSEA: Within first 45 days
FPA Assessment & goals: Within 90 days
Case Conferencing: Quarterly
Tools:
Knowledge Checks
Are you ready to check for understanding? No worries, if you do not do well the first time, you can take the Knowledge Check a second time.
Good luck my friend!
