How can I support the Head Start community in its parenting education efforts?

I can act on the knowledge…

• that parenting education opportunities can be designed in a way that supports parents or increases their capacity and confidence in raising healthy children.
  
• that it is important to assess what the program is currently doing to support parenting education opportunities.
  
• that careful planning includes selection of materials.
  
• that there are guiding principles that underlie successful implementation of a parenting education program.

In their review of the field, Carter and Kahn define parenting education as: programs, support services, and resources offered to parents and caregivers that are designed to support them or increase their capacity and confidence in raising healthy children.¹ Parents need and want information. They also need and want social support, from other parents as well as from professionals.

Head Start gives parents both of these things. Programs already provide many parenting education activities. The challenge for programs is to pull together these various activities and build a comprehensive and coordinated program, beginning with what parents need. In other words, parenting education requires strategic planning, that is, planning ahead for change in the future.

Strategic planning is especially important for parenting education. Many programs report that today's Head Start parents are distinctly different than their counterparts of twenty, ten, and even five years ago. They bring a different set of life experiences and face a different set of stresses and challenges. Their interests, needs, and family strengths are different as well. Parenting education practices that have been successful in the past may no longer have the same appeal for today's parents.

Strategic planning involves three steps: assessment, or looking at what the program is currently doing; planning, including identifying areas that need to change; and implementation, that is, establishing a process for putting plans into action. All of these steps are important. Each of them works best when parents are involved in meaningful ways.

Assessment

Just as it is important for families to begin by looking at their strengths before making changes, so too is it important for programs to begin by reviewing what they already do and do well. … Including a cross-section of parents and staff will make [the parenting education opportunities] more effective. But these activities should be considered as just the first step in assessing program strengths.

It is not enough for a program to know just what they are doing. Programs need to know how well it is working. The best source for the latter information is to ask parents - not just the parents who are currently participating in activities, but also parents who are not participating. Both groups of parents can provide valuable information on what works (or doesn't work) and why, parents' interests, and parents' concerns. Programs need all of this information in order to plan. Encourage participants to select one or more of the Next Steps activities in this module to fully assess their program's efforts.

Planning

Careful planning begins with selecting materials. With so many parenting education programs to choose from - there are more than 50,000 on the market today - programs and parenting educators need to develop strategies for screening materials in order to match information and skills to the interests and needs of parents.

In screening and selecting materials, staff and parents might ask themselves the following questions as starting points:

• Does this material use a strengths perspective? In other words, does the material recognize that parents already bring experience and expertise to parenting education or does the material treat parents as blank slates that need to be filled in? Read the introduction and purpose sections of materials carefully for clues about a resource's underlying philosophy and decide if is right for your program and parents.
• Is this material culturally sensitive? In other words, is the information and advice offered in the materials compatible with the beliefs and values of the families in your program? As you review the resource, look for information about who the material was designed for or, if it was evaluated, who participated in the evaluation. Look at the illustrations and listen to the language of the text to see if they are appropriate. Finally, think broadly about culture to include age and gender.
• Is it appealing? In other words, does the material cover information and/or skills that match the interests and needs expressed by parents? Keeping in mind what parents have said they want, read the materials or review the table of contents for topics that match those interests.
  
  If the resource is a training curriculum, read through the activities and decide if they are engaging and fun or whether they rely heavily on lecture. Also, look for materials with varied training strategies (i.e., discussions, role plays, observations) to accommodate a diversity of learning styles.
• Is it readable? In other words, are print materials in a language and at a literacy level that are comfortable for parents? Work with parents, staff, and community members to identify people who can help translate materials.

While there are some excellent parenting education materials available, no one curricula can possibly cover every topic of interest to parents. Programs will need to work with parents to screen and select a range of materials that become their “resource library” for parenting education. Think of these materials as starting points from which to build a parenting education program that is tailored to the parents in your program. You will find that you can use some of these resources just as they are, while others will need to be adapted (e.g., turning workshop information into a newsletter article so parents who could not attend the workshop have access to the information).

Part of planning also includes identifying gaps in services. Programs will likely find that they will have to create some new materials or services to be responsive to parent needs. For example, programs may find they need to create a support group for fathers or grandparents in response to local needs. Once again the involvement of parents and community members will ensure that new initiatives have the support they need to take root.

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The 21st Century Exploring Parenting Curriculum is an excellent parenting curriculum developed by Head Start.

Implementation

Moving plans from paper to reality is the final challenge in strategic planning. Implementing parenting education cannot be the sole responsibility of planning teams, but must include roles and responsibilities for all staff and a broad range of parents. Parenting education can be (and often is) part of the everyday fabric of Head Start activities. In Head Start, parenting education is integrated throughout the program: in home visits, classroom volunteering, workshops and discussion groups, planning committees, advocacy activities, and informally through discussions and observations. Once again, the activities in this module can be starting points for implementation, but participants should be encouraged to go beyond to engage more staff and parents in the implementation process.

Finally, while there is no single way to plan or implement parenting education, there are guiding principles and assumptions that underlie good programs and that underlie the activities in this module:

• Parenting is a learned skill, not an instinctive one.
• All parents have the ability to be good parents.
• All parents have strengths.
• All parents need and deserve support, although these needs can and do vary.
• No family exists in isolation, and healthy families maintain a dynamic interdependence with their extended family and broader community.
• Every child is different and every family is different. What works for one does not necessarily work for another.
• There are no “quick fixes” - healthy parenting is developed over time.
• Families must participate in shaping their own education and support.
• The best programs for parents are those that nurture partnerships with parents and develop collaborations with other support agencies.
• The diversity among individuals, families, and communities is an asset that can be used to strengthen each individual, each family, and each community.¹

A responsive and comprehensive parenting education program requires the efforts of a range of parents and staff. The planning team is the starting place, the catalyst, for bringing together the efforts and strengths of all parents and staff members.

¹ Carter and Kahn, See How We Grow, 1995