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Principles for Providing Family - Centered Care
 

Working with families means actively engaging them in decision-making, connecting them to other families, and respecting their goals and background. This fact sheet provides disabilities coordinators, teachers and other staff with the principles that guide family-centered care in disability services in Head Start programs.
The following is an excerpt from Including Children with Significant Disabilities in Head Start.

Principles for Providing Family - Centered Care

Head Start staff can strengthen their partnerships with families and promote family centered care by incorporating the following principles into practice and policy:

  • Recognize that the family is the constant in a child's life, while the program, staff, and services within the delivery system change over time.

  • Actively solicit and respond to the family's preferences, questions, and needs.

  • Exchange complete and unbiased information with families which takes into account their different needs and coping strategies.

  • Honor individual, family, and cultural diversity and strengths.

  • Assure that the program's support systems are flexible, accessible, comprehensive, and responsive to the needs of all children and their families.

  • Facilitate and encourage family-to-family support and networking.

  • Strengthen family partnerships at all levels in the way you:
  • care for children with disabilities and their families
  • develop, implement, evaluate, and refine programs for children with disabilities
  • form and strengthen policies for children with disabilities and their families.
  • Appreciate families as families and children as children. Recognize that all families and children possess a wide range of strengths, concerns, emotions, and aspirations beyond their need for specialized health and educational services and support.
* Adapted with permission from T. Shelton and J. Stepanek. 1994. Family-Centered Care for Children Needing Specialized Health and Developmental Services. Mount Royal, NJ: Association for the Care of Children's Health.

"Principles for Providing Family-Centered Care." Including Children with Significant Disabilities in Head Start. Training Guides for the Head Start Learning Community. HHS/ACF/ACYF/HSB. 1998. English.