How can I support the Head Start community in its efforts to support families?
I can act on the knowledge...
Imagine...
... A young mother going for support and encouragement when she feels overwhelmed by her responsibilities at home.
... A father and his children dropping in for a hot lunch, visiting with other parents while the children play, and getting some professional advice about a child's health care.
... A parent completing a drug treatment program and going to find available community resources to her family.
... A group of parents sitting and talking with a professional about how to help their children cope with violence in their neighborhood.
Imagine...
... Caring staff members recognizing how difficult it is to raise children and praising parents for their efforts.
... A health aide accompanying a pregnant mother to a health clinic for her first prenatal visit because she is nervous about going alone.
... A coordinator sending a home visitor to a young father's apartment to talk about child rearing, teaching him how to stimulate his child's development, and connecting him with the special services his child may need.
... A family service worker giving support to a young couple when they are having trouble with their children and don't know what to do next.
The above illustrates the concept of family support - a concept that is alive and well in Head Start agencies across the country. As you can see, family support aims to keep families healthy and intact through a broad range of preventive and supportive services delivered with flexibility, personalized attention, and cultural sensitivity. All family support programs work toward the basic goal of strengthening families to ensure the well-being and healthy development of the next generation.
Head Start, since it was initiated in 1965, is often known as the "pioneer" in the family support movement. Head Start was the first to design a national educational program acknowledging the interrelatedness of health, nutrition, parent involvement, family services and children's learning. During the last two decades, there has been an explosion of family resource centers, family support programs, and parent education programs across the United States. Family support is now a national movement, coming from a variety of sources.
Head Start has much to contribute to this movement, and also needs to learn from it. ..You can enhance your agency's current family support efforts and become instrumental to future generations by giving staff the skills needed to embrace and work with families.
Head Start now has an opportunity to become an integral, integrated agency in the continuum of community agencies, and a leader in the family support network emerging in communities across the nation. But, to meet its mission, and to help its families, it needs to continue learning new skills and acquiring knowledge on family support.
… Be a part of this exciting movement, begun on the grass roots level, which is now reshaping efforts to strengthen children and their families.
Head Start was born, and has survived, with the kind of spirit and determination that lives in the hearts of all young children. Head Start is about the future. Perhaps more than any other social program in its time, it is a symbol of hope for a better life for low-income children and their families.
-Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion, Creating a 21st Century Head Start
As presented by the Advisory Committee in Creating a 21st Century Head Start, Head Start agencies embrace families and encourage them to achieve a better life - a life where families not only meet but exceed their basic responsibilities. Head Start, therefore, serves as a network of support complementing, not assuming, such basic responsibilities as economic support, health care and protection, education and socialization, and family maintenance. We call this network family support.
Skilled staff play a significant role in helping families achieve goals for a better life. …[These] skills are especially relevant for staff who work directly with Head Start families. Staff have critical roles, individually and as part of team interactions with families, to promote and sustain supportive partnerships.
Performance Standards A major goal of
Head Start is to support families. To accomplish this goal, staff
should meet the Performance Standards requiring them to:
- Form relationships with families aimed
at improving the conditions and quality of family life;
- Help families identify and use
resources to support them in dealing with demanding or stressful
situations;
- Contribute to the development of
children by offering families support in carrying out parenting
responsibilities;
- Employ strategies for helping families
address their concerns, deal with challenges effectively, and
achieve their goals; and
- Be a family advocate so that families receive needed assistance from the Head Start agency and the broader community.
See
also:
Design
for Family Support
