Self-Care Tips for Family Services Professionals and Home Visitors
Promoting simple but effective ways to support one’s own wellness can contribute to the wellness of individuals who work with families, the overall program, and the families served.
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.
Promoting simple but effective ways to support one’s own wellness can contribute to the wellness of individuals who work with families, the overall program, and the families served.
Review strategies to support the wellness of family services professionals and home visitors; the resource is written for program supervisors and leaders as well as family services staff and home visitors themselves.
Program leaders play an essential role in creating a healthy workplace by supporting policies and practices that minimize staff stress and burnout, promote staff wellness, and support high-quality family engagement.
Each March is a renewed opportunity to honor and celebrate the social work profession nationally. These unsung heroes have a profound, positive impact on the lives of millions of people every day.
In this series, learn more about the core knowledge and competencies early childhood professionals need. Find out how these skills are key to engaging families effectively in positive, goal-oriented relationships.
This resource suggests three simple but important strategies that Head Start program staff can use to navigate conversations with families about COVID-19-related vaccine and mask requirements.
Explore this resource to learn the benefits of engaging families virtually and five evidence-based strategies for virtual family engagement. Use the tools to plan and develop an action plan for implementation.
Use any combination of these strategies to meet individual families’ needs and goals related to the outcomes in the Head Start Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework.
When planning your year, assess which virtual engagement strategies work best for your program and families. Then, use the Virtual Engagement Planning Tool to develop your action plan.
Use the following tips to gather the information you need to begin planning virtual family engagement services. These tips also can help strengthen your current practices and support ongoing improvement.