Webinar Series

Relationship-Based Competencies to Support Family Engagement for All Early Childhood Professionals: An Overview

Brandi Black Thacker: We hope you're here to talk about the Relationship-Based Competencies to Support Family Engagement for All Early Childhood Professionals. And those of you that know the relationship-based competencies of yesteryear are going to be so excited. I'm just going to claim it, we're so excited about what we have in store for you today because when we say, "all professionals," I think we did really do, Cathy, have something for everybody here.

So, we're excited to have everybody who's here, and we're looking forward to hearing all of the good ideas that you have to contribute to some of the things we brought for you to consider today. And what we're going to do now is just talk a little bit about the logistics of our web series and then a few logistics about today in our technology and then some objectives. And so here we are today, September 6, the RBCs, which is our shorthand for Relationship-Based Competencies: An Overview. So, today, you're going to get all of the overarching bits, how the series is organized, how the documents are now set up so that you'll have all the things that you need to be ready for these brand new documents which I hope you guys will read well.

On September 20, we are actually going to be doing a specific focus on the RBCs for Teachers and Child Care Providers, and we'll talk a little more about each of these here in just a minute so you can see how they're connected to each other. On October 11, we'll be coming back with the RBCs for Family Service Professionals. And rounding out, our series on November 1, with RBCs for Home Visitors. If you didn't have your pencil ready or you didn't have your phone to take a screenshot of this, don't worry, we'll come back to this with these dates at the very end. So, if you're interested in coming back to visit with us, you can see those again before we leave each other. The four part series, this is one of four. We hope to see you again. And with that, I should stop with my talking for a little bit and introduce you guys to one of my most favorite people who I've really enjoyed learning from on this journey, and many others, that I'm honored to be with her today, and I'm so glad that you get to be with her too because she has been one of the thought leaders on these relationship-based competencies. And I'm excited that we get to learn from and with her today. So, let me let her introduce herself. The one and only Dr. Cathy Ayoub.

Cathy Ayoub: Thank you, Brandi. Hi, everybody. It's really good to be here. I am so excited that we finally have these ready to bring to you and to really talk about the relationship-based competencies. We've been working on these for a while. And some of you may have even helped us with them and thank you so much. And I'm just really excited as one of the principal investigators at the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, I think that we're just really so pleased and eager to hear what you have to say about them. So, Brandi, let's do it.

Brandi: Let's look. There's so much to talk about in such a little time, an hour just flies right on by. So, here's what we built. You know, before we got to be with you today, and we really like to watch what you're saying in chat and drive the conversation in the way that you're leading this. So, just know, this is what we built for you, and we'll hover where you take us. But we really want to talk to you about the revisions of the Relationship-Based Competencies. So, many of you have used these over the years and have integrated them into your systems and services and not only for family folks but how we believe at the National Center, we know you do too. It's everybody's business. So, we've been using these to integrate in a lot of different ways and we want to show these versions for you.

And we want to also talk about how they can be used in different kinds of early childhood professional settings. You guys always teach us things that we never predicted, what happens with these resources, so we're going to offer a few of those, not only that we've learned from you but also that we've hoped will sort of be inspired by this news that based on the way that they were written and proposed not only for programmatic level but also bigger systemic, like perhaps even state level work, that's my tea, in the end, we want to think about how to use these RBCs for, of course, professional development and at all those levels that you see on the screen, individual program, state/regional, territorial, tribal.

So, these are some big things ahead of us in the next, you know, like 50 minutes or so, but we're up for the task and we know you are too. So, here's one more poll for you. We want to check in and see who has history, who has history with RBCs. So, do you know them, love them, live them, have them memorized? If you do, click that first radio button. You have a general understanding of the RBCs but don't reference them regularly, that's your second choice. And then the third one, "I'm familiar with it, but I want to better absorb it." That's an option. And then what in the world is an RBC? And that's okay too, that's one of the many reasons that we're here together today, to fill each other in on the Relationship-Based Competencies. All right, this is good to see, a lot of you haven't seen them before, so we'll be sure to show you, we'll show them off in new way for those of who seeing them for the first time but at a refreshing way, I hope, for those of you that know of them and have used them before. Drum roll, please. Miss Nina, Let's end the poll and see what we came up with. So, 44.4 percent of you want to know what an RBC is. So, that's great to listen, we can really hover in the places of their historical context, their value. But also, while we think this all will be so exciting for you in this format, then looks like about 32% of you are familiar but you want to absorb more. So, that can totally be accomplishable today. And then others who, like about 17 percent have a general understanding, and about 6 who know it, love it, live it, have it memorized. So, hopefully, we'll have something for everybody today wherever you find yourself in that spectrum. And looking forward showing you what we have in here and your reaction. And what we're going to do now for everybody is just give a little bit of history really about where the relationship-based competencies came from.

And, Cathy, you know, I'm realizing in my excitement to be talking about the RBCs, I never even told you guys who in the world I am. So, let me do that real quick as we transition. My name is Brandi Black Thacker, and you did see my picture beside Cathy's. I have the honor to direct the Training, Technical Assistance and Collaboration effort inside the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, and I'd just say the Relationship-Based Competencies or the RBCs are one of my most favorite sets of our work. So, let's kick off with what they are and then we're going to talk a little bit about kind of how they work, what they look like now, and how you might consider using them in your very important role. But to do that, Cathy, let's start with you on sort of what they are and then we'll kind of build from there.

Cathy: Sounds good, Brandi, and jump in. The Relationship-Based Competencies are a set of -- Individual practices that essentially come together to make up a body of practice for folks who are working with families in early childhood settings. So, let me start with that really basic, so that these are really a set of practices that are really outlined and will help you in your role to understand what the activities of each of you as professional providers might do, what you might learn, what skills you might be involved in, and then really how you really might go about your practice in working with families, partnering with families, and joining them in a truly relational way. So, Brandi, you want to say more?

Brandi: Well, you know, I was just thinking about what we've heard, and we'll share examples like these throughout our time but, in terms of how programs have used these, specifically for those of you who are just coming to know them, we actually have heard of folks integrating the language from these into job descriptions for each of the roles on, you know, their team depending on, you know, the levels of whether it's program and/or a larger, more macro sort of set up. And I think that's one thing that we'll say here too that's as we get into some of these things, you'll notice that some of the language had been broadened so that all of us within the early childhood to feel can find ourselves within these relationship-based competencies. So, that's another exciting thing that we have for you to look at and to consider and to see where you fit based on how these were written, which was across paradigms, across like a code of ethics across the different things that we know that you guys are using out there so that it's really synthesized in one big place about how we really do walk beside families in a deep way through relationship and what that concretely looks like. So, with kind of that as our foundation, we wanted to kind of showcase for you guys what this new suite -- That's what I'm calling it, Cathy, the sweet suite.

Cathy: I like that.

Brandi: If you guys are familiar with RBCs, you know that we had a version that has existed since -- Gosh, Cathy, how long now? 2000... Oh, too many gray hairs ago.
Cathy: 2012.

Brandi: So, the core version of the Relationship-Based Competencies have been out since 2012, but there was a piece before that that had been established, I believe, back in 2001, where we had these indicators and -- So, what we have today here before you is, on the left-hand side, you see represented in green, what we're going to talk about today, which is like what we call our universal RBCs. Yes, Jamie, that's exactly the right -- That's what I had in mind. The RBCs, the overview, that's where we're at today, and the document that we have to support this conversation is really what we call the universal document, like what we all need together, no matter our role to walk beside families in a meaningful way. So, that's represented in the green box, and that's where we'll be hovering the most today. Then off to the side, this is exciting, we actually broke down their roles, the concrete ways that we can get beside families in a meaningful way based on how we already interact with them.

So, we have the top blue one is for Family Service Professionals. We have, in the middle, one for Teachers and Child Care Providers. And then last but not least and many of you who are on the line today are Home Visitor colleagues that are specific to the work that you do within your program option in your day-to-day responsibility. So, you saw at the top of the webinar that we have -- This is the first of a four part series, so we'll actually be going through each of these in detail for you on those dates that we showed at the beginning and that we'll show again at the end. So, this is the whole suite, that's why I call it the sweet suite of the four documents that really work in conjunction with each other, that can be used specifically for you in your role and/or for, you know, your programs, and even, we have a state looking that the RBCs too, right, Cathy?

Cathy: Yes. Mmm-hmm.

Brandi: Well, let's define this here for you now, like what is -- We're getting down to the actual concrete business. What is a Relationship-Based Competency? Here's what we have. And you'll see more of these words as we go forward in some of the key terms that we're going to list up with you today. But think about the knowledge, skills, and individual practices, other characteristics, including attributes, behaviors, action, that are necessary to be effective in your family engagement work. And you guys know, like we do, that we use engagement very specifically, different from involvement, a higher level of interaction with the each other where families take the lead. The engagement for us is very specific word that is super-meaningful. I do want to mention this now because several of you have asked in chat.

If you look over on the left-hand side of your screen, there's a little pod in the middle that says, "files for download," what you're going to see first is just an overview of the 10 competencies. And we want you to make sure to have that as we go through them here in just a little bit. And then thank you, Nina, who has actually gone right to our webpage that lives on the ECLKC and has given you the link right to all of these good bits. So, we'll put that up again as we go along so that you have it close by. But you can also download like the two-page version so that you can see all 10 competencies at once off to your left in the file for download pod. And all you do is click "The RBC Overview Handout." And then you actually have to hit the "Download Files" button to make sure that you get that to your own technology, laptop, desktop, whatever you're using today, mobile device perhaps. But, Cathy, before we move from this, are there any other things that you would add to the actual definition here?

Cathy: I think you've been clear on the definition. One of the things that I wanted to say is that this overview of the Relationship-Based Competencies, we would love for you to use that along with the role-specific competencies, so that if many of you are waiting to hear about what are we going to say specifically for teachers, or for home visitors, or for family service workers, we always want you to take this overview that's here for download now and match it with the role-specific documents that we'll having for you as we move forward with these webinars. And so, it's really -- This overview, it's really an important document that you can share with anyone. And if any of you are feeling left out, like, you know, "There aren't role specific RBCs for me," the overview is really for you as well. So, I just wanted to say that little bit about how to use this overview.

Brandi: Yeah, that's a great reminder. And that really was born from -- And this is always one of my favorite parts because we're going to transition into some of the pieces about, you know, for instance, why the RBCs are important. And, you know, we've really been thinking a lot about how we do what we do within Head Start, and certainly, this document was written for Head Start and for childcare, everybody who works within that early care community. And it's become really important for many reasons, a couple of those that we could lift up are pieces that really help articulate how we do what we do together and allow us to even look personally at our own trajectory as a professional and not only for our day-to-day interactions but where we want to go long term, how that's informed our leadership, how leadership has used it to inform things like funding for instance in the five-year project period or even how states have been thinking about integrating this in a consistent way across, for instance, like subsidy workers, sort of organizational pieces. So, it's just incredible. But, Cathy, I know that you've had a long history with the RBCs, and I want to make sure that you add your insight on this part as well.

Cathy: Thank you, Brandi. Again, you and I both have a long history with the RBCs together. One of the things that we really felt that's important was that we needed to pull together those... Again, the understanding, the skills, the practices, and really bring them together so that individual practitioners have a guide for their practices as well as to provide supervisors of direct service staff some guidance about what staff might need for them through supervision and also the roles of leadership in thinking about the RBCs. So, you'll see that we felt that one of the really important pieces was to be able to describe those practices for direct staff but also for those of you in leadership positions. And again, this really defines the area of practice around family engagement. So, it gives you guidance to be able to do all the many things that Brandi just mentioned, from thinking about job descriptions to hiring, to performance reviews, to helping direct staff have a roadmap for thinking about, you know, what are the kinds of things that my job entail in the context of working with families and how might I do that work.

Brandi: That's great, and this very helpful, we're also being reminded that a couple of our colleagues, folks really use these too in sort of the parallel process, not only how they are with and beside families but each other, with community, which, Cathy, you pointed out earlier and with spenders, with stakeholders, I mean these things, you know, are powerful and they work with any interaction in which you are inclined to apply them. And one of our colleague Jacky was also reminding us, it's really a wonderful, pretty easy, almost like a lattice, if you will, for professional development so that you're able to sort of determine where you are, where you want to go, and we have a couple of assessments that we'll tell about that actually give you a frame to do just that. So, we just wanted to kind of give you a
couple of these things in the visual cue, even though we've already kind of mentioned that loud, who can use these, and it's really just the whole broad base of folks who live and dwell within.

The early childhood systems, of course that, I mean, we've even had folks get curious about these from different paradigms. So, it's been exciting to see how the work that started and began and really was born in Head Start has just grown and blossomed over the years. Now this is my favorite slide really because this is when most of you who said, "I have no idea what this is" will now say "Oh, yeah, I do what that is." You see, the cover, that's usually how I am anyway. What you see on the left-hand side has been the RBCs that we've had since about 2012 that Cathy and I were mentioning earlier. And what we have now, as I said, with the sweet suite is over on your right-hand side. And so, you'll see with the green strip on the bottom, that's the universal overview document. And thanks, Nina, for putting back in, the link, so everybody can go find that on the ECLKC. And then you have behind that one the three role-based documents that we'll be going into deeper in the future webinars in this series.

But with all that, we quickly wanted to check-in, because we've already been with each other for 30 minutes, on any question or reactions in the chat. And by the way, just so you know, we will the staying after, today, at least 15 minutes. If you've ever been with us, you know that we have a chat after the webinar, in case you have anything left lingering, then you're welcome to insert anything here now if something is just really on your mind that you want to put a pen in. If we don't get to it right away, we'll certainly create some space to do that at the end. So, that's just some foreshadowing in case something comes up for you. But, Cathy, this is, I know, my favorite part to hear from you because, I have to tell you guys, every time I hear Cathy speak about these and the 10 competencies confident, there were none, that's another one, now that are 10, I learned something new about either how to organize or the intentionality of how they go together or who might benefit from which ones. So, what we really want to do is showcase each one for you and think together about how everything fits.

And to do that, one of the things that I wanted to make sure that folks have really wrapped themselves around is the terminology because as all of these things fit together, you know, in my mind, it is like a formula that you see here on the screen. And I want you to keep these words in mind as we actually show you the specifics of these documents so that you'll have that fresh in your minds as you figure out how all of this might be meaningful or at least something that you can consider in your program or in your work. So, let's look at these quickly. We have what I've been calling tiers. Under each competency, there are these tiers that we call knowledge, skills, and practices. And the big thing I want you guys to see here is that those three things together, the Knowledge + Skills + Practices = Professional Practice. And you can see over on the right-hand side in the bubble how we really define that.

And it's, as I said, the combination of those three pieces that are... And that they evaluate, and Cathy gets excited about this, measurable or observable and describe what a person needs to know and how to do the work successfully. Those words in particular hold a lot of power and meaning. And, Cathy, I'm even thinking of some recent work we did with our colleagues from the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning and around practice-based coaching even. So, the word "observable" to me now pops out as oh, when teachers, and we have several education experts on the line today, are using these RBCs. Those practices can actually be transferable over into what you're already doing. For practice-based coaching and because, you know, being observable is the whole point of that too, so lots of opportunities here. Let me make sure that you keep in mind that key terminology as we go forward because you're going to need to know that almost all your secret decoder ring. When you really get into the heart of these documents. And, Cathy, without further ado, let's get you in here so that you can teach us how these things work and how they are organized.

Cathy: Sound good, Brandi. So, there are 10 major categories that make up the Relationship-Based Competencies or 10 areas of practice that I would focus. Those of you who really knew the prior version of the RBCs, there were nine and we've added one. And I want to tell you a little bit about each of them. Our notion is that if you're really doing what we call comprehensive family engagement, you're involved in all 10. But there was kind of a method to the way that they're organized and the way that we develop them, and here you see the first three. We did organize them with some particular thoughts in mind. And actually, the first three tend to be the three that we think are closest in to doing family engagement work. And that this organization, that everyone across an organization is going to think about positive goal-oriented relationships. Again, teachers may think about establishing those relationships with families through somewhat different vehicles or different ways than family service workers.

And then home visitors, those of you who are home visitors, have this unique role where you bring the family work and the child work together and you carry all of that forward in a home visit. But each of you really look at positive goal-directed relationships And this really means that you're engaging in mutually respectful, positive, and goal-oriented partnerships. And by goal-oriented, what we mean is that there is a purpose to your engaging in a relationship. Yes, it's critically important to greet people, to say hello, to welcome them, but your purpose, which is really to really support families, to help them progress and to support the learning and health and wellness of their children, that's your goal orientation. The second one really involved self-aware and culturally responsive relationships, so this is the positive relationship that we think about that it's really important with everyone, that involves respect, understanding, respecting, responding to cultures, language, values, and family structures.

And again, that one is that up there close to the top because it's something universal that we really think of as being so important for everyone. And the third, really thinking about family well-being and families as learners. The work that each of you do to support this particular competency really has to do with the reflections and planning for families around safety, health, education, wellbeing, and their life goals. Brandi, I'm going to stop there about the first three. Again, there's a reason why these are at the top and our thinking is that this is really where most folks can enter first, although some of you in your roles may feel like you can enter into thinking about competencies in some of the later competencies. So, I would urge you to think about where are the places that you can see yourselves and where can you enter first.

Brandi: Oh, Cathy, I love this. It's just the grounding or the anchoring in these first 3 of 10. And so many of you guys already mentioned this, I'm trying to scroll up quickly, one of you mentioned about our seven family engagement outcomes really early. And you'll notice that these first three are really reminiscent of those seven family engagement outcomes that live in the blue column of our framework on purpose. Some of you guys have already, you know, really got a lot of incredible systems around those seven family engagement outcomes in the blue column of the framework. And so, you'll notice, like those positive goal-oriented relationships that's the arrow from the framework. The culturally responsive piece, if you haven't seen our new framework, we did a webinar just last week, we have a whole second tier to our arrow now that includes all things equity, inclusion, culture, language, and responsiveness to all families, we have the honor to serve. So, I just want to point out here that Cathy's words can't be underscored anymore because we want you to see the synchronicity, not only with the framework but also with what you've already built in your program and/or within your own systems that these really the support. Because you guys are really worried, I want to make sure that you know, the PowerPoint is available for you to download in the left-hand side of your screen.

Thank you, Miss Nina, for putting that in there for us. We know you guys really like to have that, it's on the left-hand side and it's called RBC Overview Web, it's like six megabytes or some MB, whatever that is. And you just click it, and click "download file", and you'll have it of your very own. So, we know you get anxious about that, we do too, we want to make sure you have what you need. So, let's use that to transition to, remember I said here... Keep those words in my mind, remember what I said about knowledge, skills, and practices? So, what we have here, we popped out the second competency on self-aware and culturally responsive relationship that Cathy just overviewed for us out of the three. And you'll remember that after the knowledge, skills, and practice is equaled, this professional practice column. So, that's your secret decoder ring. But I also want to say to you, when you get into the actual documents and that link that we gave you earlier, here's how these selected examples fall out. The first bullet that you see here is the K, the knowledge.

So, when you look at this in our documents and you get into these selected examples, what now you will know is, "Oh, that first bullet is really the knowledge, that second one is the skill, and the third one is the practice." And remember the formula slide, that knowledge, skill, and practice equals the professional practice what you see in that second column. So, it's really just a great way to be able to use these to mobilize in specific ways in service of not only the competency of course but how we are with and beside our families and each other. Cathy, with that, let's look at four through six.

Cathy: Okay, here are four, five, and six, and you'll begin to see the pattern here. As Brandi said, you can connect these to the framework. But four really have to do with supporting parent-child relationships and families as lifelong educators. And then five really are family connections to peers and community. And six is family access to community resources. So, this is really a group of RBCs. The start with thinking about, and again, having that knowledge, skill, and those practices that support parents in their relationships with their children, with families as lifelong educators of their children, and then moving from there into making family connections with peers and communities, and again, as families make connections to peers and communities, they need some help with access to community resources. Again, as you can see, we've now gone from one to six. And these are all different facets of the family engagement work that are built out for you in the context of that knowledge, skills, and then the practices.

Brandi: Thank you so much, Miss Cathy. I -- Well, you guys will start to see how these really overlay with your work and your role as you get to really know how they're organized, and I really like this piece. We've had, for instance, a lot of thoughts about "Oh, gosh, where might family workers find their work really everywhere, of course, but like are there ones that family workers would feel more connected to in terms of, you know, what you were talking at the beginning of the webinar, what you really lean to as strategies or tips, tricks that you use beside families that you know that are effective. So, we've been real curious to see how you're going to resonate with these, where you might find yourselves sort of hovering in the RBCs in more ways, you know, or spaces than others. And what that looks like as it crosses about, you know, amongst your roles. So, similarly, we wanted to get again, like, you know, really bring this -- Bring it on home with this slide, with the knowledge, skills, and practices. And equal that to that second column of the professional practice, we just brought in one of the other example Cathy mentioned here, connections to peers and community. Again, pretty straight from the framework in that blue column on family outcomes, and then the same thing, that first bullet is really the knowledge, connect families with resources and events, the second one is the skill, encourages families to identify, develop, and use formal network. And then, of course, the practice, and this is more concrete, the practice of the parent-to-parent interactions. So, all of those three things added up culminate to that second column in the professional practice, and when you guys really get into this, that's going to be helpful for you as you unpack these documents and how they might be useful. All right, Miss Cathy. We've got few more here. Let's look at seven and eight.

Cathy: Okay, let's take a look at seven and eight. And I'll say it right now, one through eight really describe individual components of practice. So, we have two more, seven, which is leadership and advocacy. And this is the one that has been added, so this was not in the prior competencies. But this really has to do with having professionals work alongside partners to help build the strength as advocates for families and leaders. And this happens both in the program and in the community. And
again, as you're thinking about your individual roles, my guess is that you'll really think about, "Well, how would I go about doing that because again, if you're a family service worker, you may do that differently than a teacher or differently than a home visitor. So, there are many individual ways that you might do this, but everyone is really also supporting leadership and advocacy. And the final individual facet of family engagement really has to do with coordinated, integrated, and comprehensive services that each professional works with other professionals and agencies to support coordinated, integrated, and comprehensive services for families. And that's both in the organization, across the organization, and also in the system.

Brandi: Cathy, I love how these progress. Oh, Lisa, look at you. I think we have a star student, Cathy. Lisa, you caught us. This is the one that's brand new, we did have 9, now there are 10, and 7 was added. So, this is the fresh hotness, as we say, that was added just in this series. So, thank you for catching it and bringing it up because that's the one that would be brand new as we said. And what's great about this is you guys know, again, to the framework, we have the whole outcome on families as advocates and leaders, so it really not only lends itself to how we strive to walk beside families in terms of their own trajectory and progress, but it just really connects to our work in so many ways. Again, in the parallel process, of course, but certainly with what our families teach us, and hopefully, what we offer along the way as well. But, Cathy, I love what you remind us about here, these are progresses really. I mean, in the way that they sort of... Correct me in how I'm saying this, that it doesn't represent the vision but how they really start a bit more one-to-one and then really kind of blow up and out to be a bit more systemic in, you know, how we're thinking about what we do beside staff families. How would you say it, Cathy?

Cathy: I think you said it beautifully, Brandi, that's exactly what it is. It moves from really having, you know, some of the key individual practices that are really in kind of different areas or with a different focus. And then the last one that you saw, number 8, which really has to do with integrating the work that we do with everyone else who's also working with families is brings us into that systemic view and then if you take a look, when you go to 9 and 10, 9 really have to do with data-driven services and continuous improvement. So, it encourages families to share information to help improve services, and we really think about how do we reflect with families to do that, how to reflect with families around their own individual progress, and how they can do that in a data-driven way as well as how programs can do that work. And this may involve data involved that is about their children, that's about the families themselves and their interests and their goals in their work around families programs and around the larger organizations and communities in which they live. So, it really covers all of those dimensions. Then finally, number 10 is really about professional growth. And this is the competency that if you want a quick kind of view of the overall professional responsibilities around practice, take a look at this one because this really has to do with professionalism and practice, and active participation in opportunities for learning, for continuing to grow as a professional, and really think about professional development as it relates to family engagement.

Cathy: So, those are the 10.

Brandi: Okay, great. There's one specific, to me -- Lisa, I'm so glad to see you guys. And Winona, too. They have a really good question here that I think would be helpful for each of us, I want to make sure you get a chance as well as you listen. So, Lisa picked out that seven was the new addition on leadership and advocacy. So, I'll flip back a slide here. And Lisa is totally like, okay, tell us more about like the basis for the ordering, especially given 7 was added, why wasn't 7 just 10, like why did it go there and not at the very end.

Cathy: Good question. Very astute. Seven is, is, again, is the last of the competencies that really have a particular focus, you know, family well-being, parent-child relationships, and families as lifelong educators. So, each one of those really focus on a particular facet of family engagement as is leadership and advocacy to really build strengths in those particular areas, 8, 9, and 10, and particularly 9 and 10, as what Brandi says, are more systemic, so we didn't want to just tack 7 on at the end and say this is new, but we really wanted to order these in a way that you could look at them and you could go through a set of competencies that would tell you about the different facets of considering family engagement practice and then at the end be able to say, and these are the two that really sum it up, particularly the last one which really goes back to a professional's own development. How am I going to grow as a professional in my work? What are my ethical obligations? What are my obligations around confidentiality? What are my obligations about my own professional learning? What other kinds of accountabilities do I have? So, I hope that helps a little bit to understand. And we want you to see the order in the progress because our hope is that then you can take a look and figure out where it might be helpful to start to think about applying the profession-based competencies to your work because we know that, you know, everyone can't take these and say, "I'm going do all 10 of these right now tomorrow." I mean, that doesn't sound realistic to me. But you take a look at the ones where you really may be able to excel, look at what you are doing, look at those facets and then also look at the overall, more systemic, and I love that language, Brandi. The more systemic competencies and look at where there is, where you're making progress, and those of you who are supervisor and leadership, where you can support your staff in making progress, as well.

Brandi: We'll look in the chat to make sure that -- Diana and Tamisa comes back and says, "Okay, great, now that makes sense." And, you know, this is some of the secret behind the things that are so helpful when you guys are, you know, really putting these to use out on the ground. So, as you're thinking about how to organize, I love Cathy's nod to what we've learned about these is that you really -- And I wanted to go back in time to the framework and specifically I'd recall is because we know that you are usually driving toward one because there's so much here to think about and so much, you know, to think sustain on in terms of celebration and things that you're already doing in a great way, but things to consider in terms of, you know, a professional development trajectory. So, we've been encouraging folks to choose like one of the competencies, and so they're looking back at like their five-year project period, you know, for Head Start and you're looking at, you know, what kinds of overarching program goals have been written and what the PD needs are. So, it's just really helping to bring, you know, all those people together in a synchronous way. And if you know that little trick that Cathy just taught us, it's helpful. Okay, well. I know that we only have about 10 minutes left and we do want to hear a little bit from you guys about how you think.

And remember, the example, I'm driving you over to that third column, we want to hear a little bit from you guys about how you think these might be relevant to your work. Now we've heard from a few of you, as you've been kind of typing in, in terms of reflections from before, and when we asked about what do you think, what questions do you have, that we specifically look back to the second competency around self-aware and culturally responsive relationship, and we're asking you to look over at that third column for the examples. And remember, knowledge, skills, and practices, we wanted to see what resonates with you, what kind of examples might you associate with how these could be relevant for you. So, I want to give you a couple of seconds to type and then we'll come back and check in. All right, let's see here. Families don't think of going with something really small and we can help them understand and realize there are more things. Yeah, and all of this specifically builds and can be integrated. One of the things that I love about the RBCs is that what the authors did was really going into other pieces of work from other paradigms like the NASW Code of Ethics like in the USC, the guidance and things that you guys are already using in your work that crosses over, so it can be recognized and it can be integrated in that way. I'm seeing a few questions fly by.

We have a team who's actually watching the questions. And don't forget that we are going to be sticking around at least 15 minutes after the webinar ends, and if you're inclined and have the space in your schedule to do that, we'd love to have you. So, if we don't get to your exact question in the time we have left, we will do our best as we stay after the top of the hour. Okay, so I'm seeing now, development of the family partnership agreement, you have resources certainly provided in the family's primary home language. Oh, I'm glad, Carrie hasn't heard of these things before but possibly can be helpful, so that's exciting to hear. And we have a couple of specific questions that we're going to be working on. So, Cathy, let me pause and see if you have seen any fly by that you want to touch on as we continue to collect these.

Cathy: Oh, there are a number of things here. I'm really pleased that folks are really, that teachers are thinking about how they may be able to use them, family service professionals, home visitors because that really was the idea, there may be different ways in which you connect with families and ways in which your roles really give you the opportunities to do special work with families. But you're all really thinking about how to use them to use them for PD planning, to use them, to even consider childcare resource and referral programs, and I'm glad that it looks like so many really things that they relate to those programs, we really hope so. One of the things that I wanted to point out is that the role-specific competencies use these 10 major categories, and underneath each category, there is pretty detailed descriptions of knowledge, skills, and practices of each category for the individuals in that role, and then there's a column next to that for their supervisors.

So, as you're thinking about how each one of these 10 competencies might be helpful, just keep in mind that as you look at the role-specific competency resources, they elaborate further on everything we've talked about here, they're not totally different. I also want to mention that if you do go on to ECLKC, you will find the role-specific competencies for professionals who work with children in groups, and that really includes folks and teachers in center-based care but also family childcare providers. So, those two groups of people, the Relationship-Based Competencies for home visitors are close to being hot off the press, and we did some additional work also to share those with certain leaders in the home visiting field, took us a little bit longer to get those out there. But I hope that they should be out there very, very soon. So, if you're home visitors, if you're not finding your role-specific competencies resource on ECLKC now, it will be there very soon. Brandi?

Brandi: Cathy, that's a great segue, too, because in addition to everything that you guys have shared and the richness of the general chat, there were some other uses, Cathy, that I wanted to just put up here. I think we've touched a few of these but I know we didn't get to the QRIS bit. What other ones would you highlight on this slide, Cathy?

Cathy: Yeah, and again, I think there are a number of ways. First and foremost, we hope that those of you who are in direct practice can use these to guide your practice and also to have conversations about your own learning, your own progress, the kinds of things that you are doing and to celebrate those and use them as ways of learning and use them with your supervisors. I think we've talked about this. As Brandi mentioned, there also is a category for leadership practices under each of the competencies in each of the role-based, relationship-Based Competency documents. So, these really target what program leadership may really want to be involved in and it sometimes goes beyond program leadership, it may also involve guidance for states or regions or childcare networks and setting standards of practice. We hope that they'll provide guidance for developing family engagement information for state, for state administrators, for folks who are involved in collab or collaborating roles, and we hope that they will also be thought of as being able to inform QRIS standards. I think, Brandi, you mentioned measures of progress for five-year goals and you may want to say more about that as well because I think that's another really important use.

Brandi: Well, a couple of folks have alluded to this too in the chat about how, you know, if an individual -- Well, I'm going to use this actually to click forward on the slide so that you guys can see a little bit of what we're thinking about in terms of resources. I wanted to use that as a transition because the resources in terms of how folks are using these toward their five-year project period plans, we have not only the four book roles that we showed you, but we have assessments for each of these roles. So, if you're a teacher and you want to look at these and how you sort of integrate the knowledge, skills, and practices into your work, we have an assessment for you to look at and sort of rate where you think you are on one of these competencies and one for your supervisor or your coach. So, this is like a really exciting thing that we'll get into as we lead ourselves into the rest of the web series. And, Cathy, there's much greater profiles, and I'm going to ask you to share with all of our friends on the line when the remaining three of this four part series opportunities will be.

Cathy: As Brandi said in the beginning, on September 20, we'll be talking about RBCs for teachers and childcare providers, and we will really drill down on those role specific competencies and also talk about what I think are the really great assessment documents that go with those. Then on October 11, we'll be talking about RBCs for family service professionals. And last but not least, we'll be talking about RBCs for home visitors on the 1st of November, and we really hope that all of you will join us, again, to hear about the role-specific competencies.

Brandi: Well, Cathy, were there any questions that came up in the span here that we need to go back to. I'm going to scroll back up a little bit because I know we missed a couple that we didn't get to touch. Let's see, well, you guys, if you're still here and there's a question that you posed that you still have as we're scrolling to look back, feel free to put it back in chat so that way it'll be on the top here and we can all see it together. We're really grateful for you guys being here today. We know how busy your schedules are, have mercy, especially this time of year. So, we're grateful to have any moments of your time together and we're especially excited to see many of you saying that you think these could be helpful in your work, that's why we spring out of bed every day. Let's see here, Cathy, I think this is a good one to ask. And I want to kind of put it out here transparently, could we have it come up before the question about transitions. And I believe it was -- I want to scroll up here. Linda asked about the family engagement and transitions from the framework because you know I kept harkening back on that blue column. So, she was wondering like, "Looks like all the other outcomes are in there, talk to us about transition, and I know we had this conversation before."

Cathy: And we have. And when you take a look at the role-specific competencies, you will find transitions really covered across a number of those competencies. So, instead of pulling it out as a separate competency, it really seemed more important to embed it beginning with, you know, goal-specific relationships but also, for example, in parent-child relationships, and in families as their, you know, children's lifelong educators that we talk about transitions there and we also talk about transitions in family well-being because we really were thinking about the family's transition as their child moves across programs, the transition into parenthood, the transition into a program with an infant, those of you who are doing home visiting, the transition to having a home visitor come into your home and then possibly going into a center-based program after having home visiting. So, again, we are clearly also thinking about, and there are some very specific preferences in terms of both knowledge, skills, and practice around transitions into kindergarten. But we did include them across a number of the competencies instead of putting them into a separate competency. So, that was our rationale.

Brandi: This has became very important for our migrant and seasonal colleagues because this is one, and many of you have done this, you took the core of those seven family engagement outcomes and you absolutely took what we thought we were saying around the operational definitions of those, but you made them real for where you are in your communities and for the families that you walk beside, and specifically, we have a lot of conversations around transitions with our migrant and seasonal communities. And that was a really pointed and important question that we heard from our colleagues there really early on as we were taken these around to various stakeholders and contributors to the field and then ultimately, our work and yours. So, Linda, if you're still here, I'm really grateful for the question and thank you for noticing. That's exciting. And I know Amanda asked about the... Oh, hey, Linda, you are still here. Good to see you. Thank you for that. The assessments, you guys are asking about those that if you follow the link that Nina has given you, she actually just put it in the chat, we want to make sure you see those.

But one thing that I want to say to you guys is they are extremely rich and they have so much detail inside and they ask each of the roles to indicate, like almost on a Likert-type scale, their comfort on those knowledge, skills, and practices, all of those tiers under all of those competencies. But what we learned over time is that folks should think about one, like remember how I said a little earlier, think about one of the competencies and how it connects to your overall work and the outcomes maybe in the blue columns because a lot of you have used those as leverage points. And then, even further into one of those tiers, the knowledge, skills, or practices, so that way, it doesn't feel so overwhelming. And even at that level of specificity, we've had managers say, "Oh, wow," you know, I had all of my staff do, you know, an assessment on the cultural competency and we went right to the practices and it informed where we were going for our own professional development for the course of the next year, like it totally helped plot and plan what we put in our own TA plan for the program or... And so there are different ways that folks have come to this, but that's a big lesson that we've learned, even though these are brand new, and it's a big lesson that we've learned to share with you.

Cathy: A couple of other questions, Brandi, just to let everyone know that every role-based Relationship-Based Competency is paired with a new assessment. So, someone wanted to know -- One of the questions was, you know, have the family service assessments been updated. And yes, they have. And they match the new versions of these role-specific relationships. And when the home visiting resource comes out, it will also be matched with the self-assessment and there would be a self-assessment for home visitors and also a self-assessment for supervisors of home visitors. And that kind of three resource package is what each of the role-specific RBCs look like. Well, we have access to it on the ECLKC. I'm wondering if there are any other questions that folks have or any other things that we missed. I want to make sure that we're looking. Someone asked about the transitions document, there isn't a separate relationship-based competency that addresses transitions. Transitions are addressed throughout each of the role-based RBCs. So, I'd urge you to take a look at the role-based RBCs documents that are out there on ECLKC because I think you'll find some of the details that you're looking for. And again, join us on September 20 when we really dig even more deeply into those role-based RBCs.

Brandi: Well, Cathy, I appreciate that foreshadowing because we do have a lot more detail to share in each of those. And I think you guys are going to really appreciate the specificity that you'll find in the detailed documents. So, go check them out and then come back and see us for the rest of the series.

Cathy: Right, someone did ask if we suggested that folks participating in the next three webinars are just the parts that pertain to you. Yeah, what do you think, Brandi? I think that, first and foremost, I would love to have you join us. Again, if you're a teacher, really come to the teacher and childcare provider session. If you're a family service worker, come to those, but one of the things that we have done is that we've made sure that there's lots of parallel work across all three of the role-based RBCs. So, if you're really interested in not only how would I do this but how would my colleagues do it and how are we going to put it together, then I would certainly invite you if you were doing that direct work on the ground to come to all three. Those of you in a leadership position who really are supervising teachers, family service workers, and/or home visitors or have some responsibility as management staff to oversee the work of folks in any of those groups, we'd also urge you to, again, first, come to the webinar where you have the most targeted interest, but we're really hoping that folks will connect. They may be looking at what their practices are in their role but how that really fits with practices of other people in different roles in the organization.

And it looks like Caitlin is really saying, she's the site supervisors, so she's going to take all the webinars. And thank you for being willing to commit all that time. We're hoping that those of you in supervisory roles really can help us and let us know if and where and when you see the meshing. We're hoping that because we've really written these competencies so that they are parallel and similar, that those of you in leadership roles can look across them and really see, oh, you know, home visitors and teachers are doing the same things and so are family service workers, so then you could even say, so we might do one professional development offering that targets this particular area of work in family engagement and maybe it needs to be multidisciplinary. So, these are some of the ways that you can think about the RBCs and how they might help direct your continuous program improvement and your professional development.

Brandi: All right, we see a couple of questions here coming in. And it looks like we're winding down. I just want you to think more about the trainer certification that you're thinking of, what we know that folks do is take and collect these certificates and put them into their PD plan to add up for the hours that they are required to have for, you know, like the licensing or Head Start standards sometimes, that's usually why we make sure you guys have them. I know that we have to explore that. I don't think we've ever had that question. We should look into that. Yeah, let us do a little research, extend the trainer... Extend the trainer day. We'll see what we can find out for you. All right, gosh, thank you, guys, so much for spending your afternoon with us. We're very happy to be with you. Thank you all so much for being with us today. And, Cathy, thank you always. Thank you so much.

Cathy: Oh, you too, Brandi. Thank you all for joining us. It's really wonderful to be able to talk to all of you and I look forward to talking to you very soon when we come back and talk about the other RBCs.

Brandi: Thank you.

Cathy: Thanks, everyone.

Exploring the Relationship-Based Competencies for Early Childhood Professionals Who Work with Children in Group Settings

Shela Jooma: Welcome to Exploring the Relationship-Based Competencies for Early Childhood Professionals Who Work in Group Settings. That's quite a mouthful for the title of this webinar. So, through the course of our conversation today, we're going to refer to early childhood professionals who work with children in group settings as teachers and child care providers. And these teachers and professionals can work in center-based care, Head Start, Early Head Start, primary child care, any variety of settings where children are in groups.

So, this is the second webinar in our series on Relationship-Based Competencies. Some of you may have joined us a couple weeks ago for the Overview of the Relationship-Based Competencies. Today, we're going to talk specifically about competencies for teachers and child care providers. And then in a few weeks, we'll have another webinar for family service professionals, and then finally, we'll round up the series with webinar for home visitors. So, before we get started, I want to make sure that everyone has a chance to introduce themselves. My name is Shela Jooma. I am a resource development manager with the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement. And I am here today with my colleagues Dr. Cathy Ayoub and Brandi Black Thacker. Cathy, would you like to introduce yourself?

Cathy Ayoub: Sure, thank you, Shela. Hi, everybody. I am Cathy Ayoub and I am one of the principal investigators at the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement and have had the real privilege to think about and then actually work on writing, developing the relationship-based competencies and I'm so excited to be here today to really introduce in detail for the first time these competencies that relate to professionals who work with children in groups. Brandi? 

Brandi Black Thacker: Hey, guys. It's such an honor to be with you here today. My name is Brandi Black Thacker, and I am the director of T/TA and Collaboration for the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, and I can't tell you how long we've been waiting to talk to you specifically. So, we're excited to jump in straight away and start sharing and continue to learn from you too. 

Shela: Thank you, Cathy. Thank you, Brandi. So, getting us started, our objectives for today are to discuss how the Relationship-Based Competencies can be used by teachers and child care providers in their day to day work and also to explore how both staff and supervisors can use the RBCs for professional development. And then you recognize that, you know, as early child care professionals, you may come from different settings, some of you may come from large programs, some of you may come from small programs, and we're hoping that these competencies will apply in some way to the work that you do.

Some of them may be more relevant than others and some of them may be challenging or some may not even be applicable. But we're hoping that you can find the examples helpful to everyone and use them to spark new ideas for strengthening your efforts at family engagement. So, let's start with a poll so that we can understand what your background knowledge is. 

So, Nina, if you can take us to the poll question and everyone can get a chance to respond. So, let us know how familiar you are with the relationship-based competencies. As Brandi likes to say, "Do you know it, love it, live it?" "Do you have a general understanding, but may be don't reference it quite regularly?" "Are you familiar with them, but need to better absorb the contents?" Or are you acting as, "What is and RBC?" All right, we quickly have kind of a mixed level familiarity here. The majority are familiar with the RBCs but need to absorb the content with kind of an equal number of having a general understanding but not referencing them regularly, and also not having familiarity with the RBC level. So, this is a great amount of information for us to get started. And, Brandi, I will turn it over to you to help us understand what is an RBC.

Brandi: That sounds great, Shela, thank you so much. And thank you guys for sharing with us about where you are coming into this conversation because it will certainly help us individualize as we go forward. I wanted to check in with you quickly too, as Shela mentioned earlier, this is a second of four relationship based competencies or what we call for shorthand, RBCs webinars. And so we were interested in seeing how many of you are here with us for the first webinar that we did as an overview, that if you could just tell us in general chat, "Me. Me. Me." We felt like it's interesting to see if we have folks that had joined us the first time. Oh, there are quite a few of you. Good to see you. Oh, first timers, we're so glad you're here too. And we want to make sure to watch where we might need to hover and to pay attention also for those of you that may have heard some of that information before. So, hopefully, we'll strike the exact right balance so that everybody, whether you're here for the first time or the second time that you'll get what you need. You guys keep us posted in chat, okay? All right, well, the first thing that I want to share with you that these are new and updated.

For those of you who might have been familiar with the relationship-based competencies or the RBCs of yesteryear, you know that we have like an overall universal document that really winded itself to supporting all of us who are in relationship and walk beside families, and there were no roles specific like examples of which we have today. So, for those of you that are with us for the first time, you know that I call this the sweet suite. We have a suite of four documents now that I think you guys are really gonna love. What you see on the left hand side in the green box is our universal document, and you guys know as well now that we talk about family engagement being everybody's business. For a family to be engaged is not only where they grow, it's where the child grows. So, we all have a huge investment in making sure that both the adults and the little folk grow in progress in the ways that we want them to, we hope they do, and more importantly, the way they hope they do as we get to partner beside them that this green document or the overview which many of you heard the last time is really in general how each of us can walk beside families in meaningful ways and what all of us lead in our tool belt to make those deposits in relationship with that family.

Later in the series, we'll talk about the light blue box and the family service professionals with specific examples that are connected to their day to day work. And today, can I get a drum roll, please, everybody in the general chat? I don't know how you type that, but give it a try. We're here to talk about the... Or see, Tony, work it out, I like it. We're here to talk about the specific examples and setups for teachers and family child care providers. And as Shela mentioned earlier, this is exactly what we're excited to think about with you guys because it applies to everybody across early childhood. And we'll talk about this here in a little bit in further detail, but I want you guys to know that there is language in here like professionals who work with children in group settings that is big and broad and general for a reason. We got to write this with a lot of stakeholders, with a lot of experts, with a lot of folks like you that teach us from programs every day for a big large audience across all of early childhood.

So, what Shela alluded to was not only the teachers, family child care providers, the folks in Head Start, Early Head Start, Child Care get to be able to use these, but we've cross referenced them with a bunch of different paradigms too, so if you're connected to other codes of ethics or like the NAEYC Code, you're going to see a lot of a great overlap here that we think you're going to resonate with. So, that's what we're going to talk about today, teachers and child care providers. And then the last in our series, last but not least, will be the discussion in the dark blue box for the home visitors that we'll be able to showcase some of those specific examples and the setup that we've developed specifically for that group of experts. So, hopefully that's exciting to you guys because this sure has been to us.

So, without further ado, many of you said what in the world is an RBC, so here is our, you know, official operational definition. Right, you guys didn't know I can do that on a fake accent, did you? It is a set of knowledge, skills, and individual practices. I really want you to keep those three like set of words in the front of your mind because we're gonna talk about those a few times. So, let me repeat them for emphasis. A set of knowledge, skills, and individual practices, those are the ones you want to put a pin on, and other characteristics including attributes, behaviors, and actions that are necessary or critical to be effective in family engagement work. And I want to pause here because you guys heard Cathy talk a little bit that she's very humble always in how important she is to this team and so many folks across the country, but she's one of the leaders not only in terms of thought leaders, and writers, managers of this whole project, but I want her to add any more language here that she feels is, you know, useful, especially since so many of us have come into this conversation newly today.

Cathy: Oh, thank you, Brandi. You know, I think you said almost all of it. The only thing that I would want to probably say again for some of you is that in developing and writing these relationship-based competencies, we really did go out to the organizations that represent early childhood, we talked to teachers in programs, we talked to family child care providers, we talked to their supervisors, we talked to folks at the state level, we talked to folks in regions. And again, we went -- Like I said, we went NAEYC, there's a wonderful organization called Cupid, that is an organization of professors who teach in early childhood, and we asked them about competencies. We talked to -- We looked at certification for teachers and all the questions that are asked there. We went to the Early Childhood and Family Engagement Research, so we really tried to cover the waterfront and not create something that didn't mesh with information that's out there that may co-relate or be related to these competencies. Back to you, Brandi.

Brandi: Thank you for that, Cathy. So, you just enhance it every time. I can't go by that side making sure you get to add. So, let's look at this. Remember when I asked you guys to kind of keep in your minds this terminology because it really stacks upon itself, and it's important for all of us to know how these terms coincide with each other and that how they connect. So, check it out. Remember I said knowledge, skills, and individual practices. Well, here's how we break those down. Knowledge is what professionals need to know. Makes sense, right? Skills are what we need to be able to do, and then we bring it on home with individual practices about how we actually do those things. So, it's the more concrete part. I have to show you guys. You see the little addition thing here.

So, knowledge plus skills plus practices equals this whole overarching term of Professional Practice. Now this is going to be meaningful to several of you for several reasons. But we want to put like an emphasis on a couple of things here. So, you guys see this professional practices, again, the combination of the knowledge, skills, and individual practices that are measurable and observable. And I want to pause here for our Head Start family. Measureable and observable really is a key part to your  coaching requirement, right? Can I get a witness in the chat to the coaching requirement? And so that part in particular, we want to find those things in places that are specifically for that coaching model, observable, right? Oh, say amen, take it on and move on. And take beyond measurable and observable, describe what folks need to know about how to do the work successfully. So, when we say that we've really tried to be thoughtful in how you do what you do every day and not add things on but hopefully offer ideas to supplement, you're already at great work, that's exactly what we mean. So, I just wanted to kind of point those things out, and we'll try to bring those specific examples that relates, you know, to specifically teachers and family child care providers in this discussion so that you'll have that in your back pocket if you could find those things useful.

Okay, now there's a couple of things here. You guys did not see this. For those of you that were here the first time, these are a set of key terms that we listed up, but we find them very important that we are all on the same page with these core, critical, foundational, super important terms. So, you can see here. The first one at the very top, you know, is our love, it's how and why we do what we do around family engagement. And I'm just going to give you the first little bit here in terms of citizens, so certainly feel free to read on. But this is an absolutely interactive process for which we as early childhood professionals, family folks, and children build positive goal-oriented relationships. And, guys, I have to tell you, you know about us, involvement is different from engagement, as family has to be engaged, whether there's reciprocity, where families take the lead before they can grow or their children can grow. I think I need to say that again. Engagement is a specific word that we use to showcase the connection on to and with families where they take the lead, where there's a deeper level of being with and beside us. And when a family is engaged and only when they're engaged is when they can grow and when their children can grow. And you guys know we spring out of bed and just go ready, right?

I mean, it's how and why we do what we do. So, that makes family engagement a whole another level of, let's be honest, and critical. So, I just wanted to kind of, you know, exclamation point that, parents and family, you'll notice that we use these terms interchangeably in a lot of this document that you'll mostly hear us as we're talking in the big wide world lean our self into family because we really want to honor all constellations of family. You guys can see this here. These could be biological, adoptive, foster parents, step-parents or grandparents.

Cathy: Let me pick up a little bit where Brandi left off. Again, she was talking about ways in which we've used a number of these terms. So, again, in talking about parent and family, let's go to that. These terms are often used interchangeably throughout the document. We wanted to make sure that for each of you, you could decide where things apply to a given family, where there may be a single parent, two parents, families that are really working along together for the child, and it really refers to all of the adults who interact with the early childhood programs and systems to support all those children in their care. And as you might imagine, this really includes any constellation of family that you see in your programs. Finally, we're talking about strengths-based perspective, and we just want to make sure that we have a definition here that really fits. This is really an approach to working with families that focuses on their interests, abilities, motivations, and resources. And we first want to focus on their strengths. I want to say this doesn't mean that you avoid focusing on problems and needs. But you really think about those problems and needs from a strength-based perspective, and taking a strength-based perspective as we know helps really build that engaging relationship, that strong relationship with families, so that it does make it more comfortable and possible to sometimes talk about the difficult things, as well.

Brandi: And one of the things we really want to do, as Cathy mentioned, let me back up one thought here. With the strength-based perspective is move from these overarching terms around family engagement, parent and family, the strength-based pieces 'cause these come, you know, pretty organically to all of us. And get into some nitty-gritty around what these competencies are and there are ten of them. And then we want to let Cathy and all of her expertise and amazing be able to walk you through what each of the ten look and sound like, but I want to give you some foreshadowing, okay? I want you guys to being looking carefully at each of the ten that Cathy introduced to us, we have a little operational definition there. And I want you to keep thinking about where you resonate and the places where you find yourself connecting. So, keep that in mind as Cathy gives us a tour of the ten. Here we go, Cathy. 

Cathy: So, there are ten relationship-based competencies for teachers and child care providers, and those of you who joined us in the last webinar, you will notice that these are the same as those competencies or these general headings are the same as the competencies that are listed in our universal document. By the way, if you want to hold on to this and have it in your hand, if you look at the left side of your screen, you will see that you have downloadable versions of both the teacher, what we're calling the competencies for teachers and professionals who work with children and groups, and also the overview. So, we encourage you to go ahead and download those, and open them up if you can, take a look because we're going to talk about them in detail. So, let me start with the first four.  We did intentionally put these in a given order. We really tried to put the competencies that we thought were most universal and more central to work first, and the first seven really represent different specific facets of family engagement issues that providers and teachers really should think about in their work.

So, as you can see the first one, it's positive, goal-oriented relationships. Again, as you might imagine, this is engaging in mutually respectful positive and goal oriented relationships with families, and you do this both to promote outcomes in the children under your care in your classrooms as well as to support family outcomes. And we do know from the research that those two are really highly connected, that families have the most impact on the outcomes for their children. So, engaging with families is something that we hope that teachers and providers working with children and groups will consider as a powerful way to also promote progress with the children that you serve directly. The second RBC in this we're going to look at in more detail in a few minutes really has to do with self-awareness and culturally responsive relationships. I think that one pretty much speaks for itself.

The third RBC is family well-being and families as learners. So, this RBC really collapses both issues around family well-being, both physical and mental health, other situations that may either reflect... And presented adversities to well-being as well as some of the positive conditions about having really adequate and continue with housing and also families as learners, how do the adult learners really continue their own growth and then development. The fourth one is parent-child relationships and families as lifelong educators of their children. And this one is obviously central to teachers whose primary responsibility is to really look at parent-child relationships in order to support and understand the work that they do every day with the children in their classroom and also to really use the critical role that families play with their children as lifelong educators to really support the children's learning so that when you partner with parents, you have really increased geometrically your influence on that child and that child's learning.

Now we're going to go on to the next four, but before we do that, I want to ask any of you who are thinking about these RBCs, if you have thoughts about some more specific ways that any of these four, any of the other six that we talk about, might specifically be illustrated through teachers in classrooms or in child care, family child care settings, please feel free to put that into chat. Let us know what you're thinking as we're talking about these general categories. Okay, let's go on to the next slide. Here's five, six, and seven. 

Number five, family connections to peers and community. This is really how teachers can work with families to strengthen the family support networks and connections with other parents and community members. One of the first things I think about here has to do with transitions. How we know that often times teachers are central to supporting families in helping their children transition, sometimes it's from an infant and toddler setting or a home-base setting, to a center-based setting, to really manage both those toddler and pre-school years and moving from one classroom to the other when that is part of the process from year to year, and that all important transition for children when they move into kindergarten. I can also think of some other critical times that are central for teachers. If there are children that are struggling with learning in some ways and need a special referral, need some support from early intervention or need an IEP in a classroom, those are critical times when partnering with families might be really helpful and where teachers really need to understand and oftentimes have knowledge, skills, and practices in engaging with those community organizations. And I'm sure all of you can think of many other examples where this might be the case. So, family's access to community resources in many ways is a partner to number five.

So, what do families know about the use of community resources? How can teachers and child care providers working with kids in groups really support families in understanding resources, everything from what about the libraries in town, or what about the parks, or what about the school system that may be able to evaluate a child who's having a learning problem, any of those kinds of situations. Then we go to number seven, and number seven is new by the way. The relationship-based competencies as Brandi mentioned that were developed about six years ago didn't include leadership and advocacy, and there were so many times when it seemed so important to think about the role of teachers in really supporting and working alongside parents to build their strength as advocates. Again, I think about some of the IEP
meetings that I've had the privilege to sit in on and that teacher from that Head Start program or from the child care program was there with that parent as a model for how to advocate, as a support for that parent, and it made an extraordinary difference. So, that's one example. Now we're going to go on to 8, 9, and 10.

And eight is a bit of a kind of a transition competency. Coordinated, integrated, and comprehensive services. This is the competency that says, as a teacher, you need to put it all together around family engagement so that as a teacher, you work with the other professionals in your organization and across agencies in the community to support coordinated, integrated, and comprehensive services for families so that families don't see the services that they're referred to, that they're receiving as side load so they don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they walk to the door of a new institution or they engage in an additional activity that relates to their children. Number nine, data-driven services and continuous improvement. As you might imagine, those of you in Head Start and Early Head Start, we know this is of special emphasis.

Those of you in child care programs, it's obviously important too. But teachers collect so much knowledge and information all the time. You gather information from families if you have those families showing up to drop off or pick up their children. You can learn so much about families. You can learn about families in a lot of other contexts. You also learn about families from their children. How many amazing stories have you heard about children's family life through their ongoing activities in the classroom every day?

So, it's really taking that information that you hear every day, and sometimes we organize it more systematically, sometimes it's even in the form of a standardized developmental screening, for example.

But again, it's really all about how do you take the information that you have as teachers, that you have uniquely, often as teachers, and use it to reflect, to share it with families. My guess is that you do it in individual family to family basis whenever you have a conference, a progress conference around their children. But then you take all the information what you learned from all the families of the children in your classroom and also put that together. How does that really help you to plan for the children in your classroom to really better support the families and their abilities to be the best parent that they can for their children and also to support your program and your community. Last but not least, we're talking about number 10 which has to do with professional growth around family engagement issues for teachers. And these are specific... This is specific knowledge, skill, and practice that really outlines professionalism and active participation for ongoing professional development related to family engagement. Okay. So, those are the 10. That is essentially where we are. Brandi.

Brandi: Well, Cathy, you know, I tried to warn everybody. [Laughter] I wanted you guys to think of the list about which of these 10 that you absolutely resonate with. But  before we go on to this slide, I have questions for you in chat. Many of you brought this up. I do want to just mention, on the left-hand side of your screen, you're going to see a pod about midway down that says Files for Download. There are two files for your viewing pleasure, today or whenever you want to review them again. One is the document that includes everything on reference in here specific to teachers and family child care providers. And at the end, I guess you guys are going to be so critical, the power point is over there, too.

So, you can -- What you have to do though is you click one of the files and then you have to actually click the Download File button. And I believe that you can do that separately or at least separately is probably your best way to go because it will pull you away from the screen. But I want to do another -- You have both there in case that could be useful for you. The other thing you should know about all of our good bits is that they live on the ECLKC. Now depending on which part of the country you live in, we might call it eclick, a-click, the ECLKC, other things, just as it how it happened in hot spots for those in the Head Start. 

Also, if you come in to us today from Child Care, we have these on the CCTA website for you to go take a peep at if you ever want to find them again and we're not right here in the room with you. Now without further ado, I want to hear from you guys. Let's start with this top question in purple. "Which of the RBCs do you think apply most commonly to your work?" Now you guys can see we have all kind of them here, 'cause if you're like me, you need the visual cue. Which one of these? And you can just put the number. 

You don't have to write out the whole thing. Which one of these do you guys feel like most commonly applies?

Oh, Soniya weighs in first. She's number one and she chose the number one. Oh, good. This is a great diverse list. Look here, Cathy. If you want some, they're coordinated, integrated, several with all three. 

Anna says, "Family well-being and learners." Lana comes in with two, the self aware and culturally responsive. Oh, TJ has first four, the parent-child relationships, families as lifelong educators. Two and four, two and three, one and four.

Cathy: Now and for Leisha, this is all of them, like I can't even decide. [Laughter] I love it. This is great. And Julie with one and nine. Wow. Yeah, you know, Brandi, this is so much, this is so great because I think the issues start with the one that resonates the most with you, with the work that you're doing, with where you are -- And really go from there. Start with where you know it really resonates, where you really feel successful, or even a place where you say "I'm really successful here but I'd like to do more in three pieces of this one." So, because we know that 10 is a lot, but if you take them one by one and even you couple them the way that some of you have done, and then those of you brave souls who were looking at all of them. Each person can tackle these in a different way that sets best for you.

Brandi: Oh, Cathy, I love that segue way because then we'll ask here and everyone should test away on this, too, so I'm going to give you a pause so you can finish typing if you started. But we want to also know what hits you straight away about which ones you want to understand more about. Let's hear from that. We're going to shift gears. We want to know which one of these do you want to think more about spending more time with. 

Cathy: Yeah, lots of nines. And you know, Brandi, the number nine just is part of my heart, my secret is I'm also a researcher, so really what I am is a data hoarder. I love  thinking about really using everything we do and we can learn to make things better for ourselves and for the families that we partner with. 

Brandi: Oh, Cathy, this is great. It also gives us information, too, of -- 

Cathy: And I have a data partner. I'm sorry, Brandi. Look at this, Denise loves the data. [Laughter] I am so excited.

Brandi: Uh-oh, Denise. Now you've done it. 

Cathy: But you have to have the first seven to be able, even the first eight to think about data about what. So, I can think of nine alone.

Brandi: Yeah, Denise, look out. Well, Cathy is in good company, I have to say, because she's right. These are ordered in a specific way, and the really cool part about these is they build on each other, and you can probably see, you know, how they stack, right, Cathy?

Cathy: You can, although I do want to say just because they were ordered in a specific way, it really does, and I think we've made this clear, but I just want to say it again, it doesn't mean that you have to start with number one. I mean we think number one around positive, goal-oriented relationships is kind of core to everything else. But, you know, people should take a look and see, again, what really resonates the most. So, that's a great way to start.

Brandi: Oh, God. I know that, you know, any time I get spend time with you, I just fly right on by in that we need to click over to another set of key terms that are going to be important. And, Cathy, I don't know if you've noticed it, but I saw at least one or two folks mention that they are coaches for teachers, and so we definitely wanted to break down a few other ways that the terms coincide with the work that you do already and how they relate here. So, I'm gonna pause and let Cathy take it away.

Cathy: Okay. Thank you, Brandi. Well, we wanted to talk a little bit about these terms and just to share them with you and see what you think about these terms. But it was important for us to really understand what some of these terms mean and to really point them out to people. So, when we're thinking about professional development, you can see the first term that we have up here. When we're talking about teachers and professionals who work with children in groups is coaching. And we know that, you know, in the Head Start world, that there actually are standards that apply specifically to coaching. Coaching like reflective practice, and reflective supervision, which are the two at the bottom, are always in which we take the knowledge in a given RBC and we translate it into skills. It's the medium by which we do this. In other words, it is a way to help teachers learn the practices.

And so the hope is that you could use the RBCs if you are a coach, or if you are supervisor working with a coach, or we know in some situation, coaches and supervisors are the same, although in some models, that's not necessarily a recommendation, you know, in small communities, maybe the same person. 

Anyway, that with coaching -- There is a real thought to thinking about the RBCs as in some ways an outline for family engagement practice that really can be used to developing some of those coaching goals.

So, that's essentially coaching.

We also want to make sure that there is some understanding around reflective practice and reflective supervision, and we don't consider coaching, reflective practice, reflective supervision, and even mentorship which I think is embedded in all three as totally different processes. Oftentimes a given coaching model or a given reflective practice model, yes, it does have particular, very unique steps and ways of implementing the work, but the notions of coaching are very similar. And I think that we often 
use reflective practice in the process of coaching and mentoring, and reflective practice is really just taking the time to think about what has happened, what is happening, and what should happen, to step back and think about where we are in the process of engaging in any activity whether it's around understanding skill building or actually implementing practices. And reflective supervision is really that collaborative relationship to support professional growth that uses that particular stance.

There are a couple of other terms here, really quickly, we want to make sure that when we use the word organizational culture that that was clear, so that's just a shared set of assumptions, beliefs, values, and goals and they should guide staff interactions. And we want to make sure that there is some support for developing that organizational culture through this family engagement work. Parallel process is something else. It's really important and this is in here in particular because not only do we have a category all the way through the RBCs that really delineate in considerable detail what the knowledge, skills, and practices are under each of the 10 RBC groups or components. But we also have a column for supervisors. And we often then talk about parallel practice. In other words, this is when an individual's behaviors and practices
are similar to the behaviors, practices, and reaction of others, and we're all working in parallel. So, when the supervisor or even a coach is modeling for the teacher, that's a parallel process.

Teachers may be modeling for the parent and parent may be modeling for teachers what is the best way to interact with their children, so parallel process seemed to be something to really pull out. And finally, we're talking about professional boundaries. And this really has to do with both the limits and professional responsibility of a role, and how we think about that, and how it needs to have some parameters but also can be flexible and to really think about the difference between personal and professional relationships, and how those are negotiated throughout our professional lives. That's probably enough said about key terms. Let me move on to really talk about some very concrete examples of knowledge, skills, and practices for teachers and child care providers. And we're gonna go to competency two which is selfaware
and culturally responsive relationships. So, let's think about knowledge, skills, and practices specifically for teachers and child care providers. So, this first knowledge bullet is to understand that each family has unique strengths and resilience.

And I would ask, if you could think about some concrete ways in which teachers really need to gain knowledge around family unique strengths and resilience and in thinking about the knowledge category, here's some of the things that are listed under the specific knowledge category for these competencies that teachers understand each family has unique strengths and resilience, that they understand that family's cultures, influence care-giving practices, and shape the child's early development. So, some specific knowledge about that that they understand and respect the variation in family's cultures, experiences, expectations in child-rearing beliefs and practices, that they also understand their own beliefs and values and experiences, and how those really influence both their skill-building and their practices, and I could go on. And my hope is you can think of some very specific situations and ways in which you might think about both gaining knowledge, and then thinking about that skill that a teacher would learn around information, around strength, cultures, languages, beliefs, values, and circumstances. 

So, the kinds of skills, as a teacher, I really might want to think about might have to do with what kind of specific skills do I need in building positive relationships with a family that may be from a culture that's very different than mine, how do I need to gain some knowledge about that family's culture, but then how do I then develop the skill to ask about that information, to really connect with that family, to observe, to understand how even in that child's behavior in the classroom may be directly related to the
family's variation in culture, language, beliefs, and value, and circumstances. And then how do I apply that, how do I build that into my ongoing practice so when the next new family comes into my classroom, it's really a family whose culture or values or circumstance is very different. How can I then take what I have, the knowledge and skill, and apply that to practice that can really support my showing sensitivity and respect for that particular family in an effort to both build my relationship with them and to provide the best possible classroom environment and learning for their child. 

Brandi: Cathy, before we leave this slide, I just want to point out what I appreciate. Well, I appreciate so many things. But I love the way that it builds on itself. Okay, so you guys remember I said keep a pin on knowledge, skills, and practices. Here they are manifested in a real way specific to teachers. And I love how even the verbs in these statements support this scaffolding, I know that's the word you guys use a lot, in our own learning. So, the knowledge is if we understand, then we seek, and then we use.

So, I just love the way that these things build on each other. And side note for those of you probably seen a few in the chat, who participate in and/or beneficiaries of the coaching model, practices can be stolen, for your, like, for instance of model that we use, practice-based coaching notions.

So, we just want to make some of those connections for you because we're very excited about how, I'm guessing, many of these things confirm and honor as we've seen in chat and when we mentioned to a couple of folks, just are really confirmed in what they do and already know that hopefully they're some things that you really get into the lead of this document that you'll find, that you can use to build through our personal trajectory, you know, towards like the professional development pieces that mean something to you. Sorry, Cathy, I got, you know, I get excited. Before we transition over to the slide that's actually for supervisors, this slide in the middle really just gives the nudge just to what I said about how they're all connected to each other and you'll remember that the three of these things actually culminate to that overarching professional practice piece. So, let me hush again. Let the real expert here tell us a bit about what it looks like for supervisors or teachers or coaches.

Cathy: Absolutely, Brandi. You know, I'm so excited, and I hope that what is coming across, it looks like some of things that you're suggesting, you're embedding the things that you are already do that you do well. You know, there are questions here about dual language learners, and a coordinated approach in individualizing for children, and also understanding how different families may respond differently to adversity and loss like a recent death in the community. Also the notion that building a bridge is a challenge. When teachers are focused on educating children day to day, and this is one of the challenges we would put forward to all of you because we know that families are the most powerful and lifelong teachers for their children, even though all of us who have been teachers, you know, we think of ourselves as being having a lot of influence, which we do, but families really have so much more.

So, when we partner with them, we really increase those things that we're really doing in the classroom every day with the kids. So, we really can work with families to partner with them, to really enhance all that hard work we do day to day in the classroom. That said, just for the last couple of minutes, here are some examples, again and around competency two, around self-aware and culturally responsive relationships that are for supervisors of teachers. So, we want to also not forget the right hand column in our columns if you get into our resource. And think about what kind of knowledge, skill, and practice do supervisors need to have. So, in thinking about this, first of all, supervisors view professionals and families as having unique strength and resilience with diverse values, temperaments, and learning styles. So, again, the teacher needs to be supported by a supervisor who also has this deep knowledge and that this supervisor can then show or model, have the skill of demonstrating respectful interest in learning about cultures and language and supporting the teacher in his or her ability and opportunity for that learning. That then gets translated into practices for the supervisor.

The supervisor may offer coaching and training, and I want to be clear the supervisor may offer that directly him or herself or may set up a system or an opportunity, it may bring coaching to the classroom and support the organization for coaches who may not be the supervisor, or offer training so it doesn't necessarily mean that a supervisor does all this directly, but that supervisors really practice developing the opportunities for both ongoing media or medium for helping teachers learn these skills, and it may be more than coaching. We're taking coaching and training here. I think that all involves reflective practice and mentoring as components of each. And the practice then here is to offer coaching and training to increase teachers and child care providers' skills for engaging with culturally and linguistically responsive relationships with families. So, you can see how these pieces connect. Just a final thing to mention here that we're not going to talk about in detail, but if you go to page 10 and 11 in the Teachers and Child Care Resource, you will see not only are there many more knowledge, skills, and practices but you'll also see a section at the end that talks about leadership practices. And these are leadership practices that go beyond just the immediate supervisor, but there are the practices that program leadership should be engaged in order to support both supervisors and teachers in really successfully practicing this particular competency.

I'm going to stop there and hand this back to Brandi.

Brandi: One thing that I wanted to mention is there's such rich sharing happening in chat, and one of the things, I mean, I'm seeing, what I really appreciate from you guys is the real, like what happened that we know, as you mentioned Cathy earlier, that Mario brought up around, time constraints and how we do what we do. I think they also then came back and said we do what we can and we invest our energy wildly, as we know how we are to that with each individual family, and that was the thing that came up too, like, if we all benefit from individualized interactions, the littlest folks to the grown-up folks, we all really have the opportunity to make those the positive relationships when we get the Head Start families in meaningful ways around culture, around language, around just meeting families where they are, and that's all of our job, you know, that's not specific to any one role, it's really what we're all responsible to do. The other thing also -- I can't believe this hour has gone by so fast. I'll tell you a couple things.
The PowerPoint over there does have all of the needy slides and it looks like we do need to make one little edit, maybe one of the slides got repeated and the other one didn't make it in. So, thank you so much for bringing that to our attention. But let's see what we can do to fix that and get it out for you quickly, and then side note, I don't know if you've got time, but we actually always hang out at least 15 minutes after the end of these webinars in case there are more things that you want to think about, talk about, other resources that you might find helpful. So, what we want to do here in service of bringing to an end like this portion as we transition, side note, I want you guys to know there are assessments for not only teachers and family child care providers but there's for the supervisors and/or coaches, and it allows you to go through each one of these competencies, and there's knowledge, skills, and practices and really assess where you think you are, people use these in coaching for that needs assessments, people use these in reflective practice and supervision as Cathy mentioned before because, you know, those elements are actually embedded in the coaching model. So, there are just thousand different ways that we think you guys could find these helpful and that you told us that you could find helpful. So, we didn't want to leave this portion of our time together today without letting you know about those assessments and the values that we've been hearing from you that they help. remind everybody that come back and see us, I know so many of you in the room are family service professionals, we're going to be talking to you specifically with examples that are perfectly along with your day-to-day duties on October 11th and then certainly you can see at the end, very end here, last but not least, our home visitor, expert colleagues will be talking to you on November 1st. So, everybody's welcome all the time, come back and see us. We definitely love getting to spend time with you, and here's an important bit before we leave each other. Let me get my official voice on. You're going to get a thank you survey link today and when you complete that survey link, guess what, guys, you get an official certificate for your professional development file. It showcases that you spent time with us today, so when you go into your email box and you find that survey, and you complete it.

You're going to get a certificate that you can keep for your very own records and document that you spent a little time with us today. And with that, we're going to pause here, and we're going to hang out and answer any questions or highlights that you want to offer, things you want to share and celebrate. But before we officially close out this portion, thank you so much, the one and only Dr. Cathy Ayoub, our whole NCPFCE team, our federal leader, Kiersten Beigel from the Office of Head Start, and most
importantly all of you for spending your very valuable time with us today.

Well, I have to talk about Mario that we've already put here in chat. They're taking a more hands-on approach as managers, NCPFCE managers, shadowing and mentoring the teachers through the engagement process. Mario, let me just say to you, this is a super powerful model, and one of the things that we're always craving in our Head Start and child care community is, you know, where those silos may exist, just put the note down. So, in service of all of the folks that we have the honor to serve, we have this open communication channel and that's like really exciting model. Cathy, what else are you saying? I had to scroll up to scroll down.

Cathy: Oh, I was actually looking at some of the comments too. I wanted to say, I noticed that -- I know there are a number of family service folks who are really on here too, and one of the things that you will all notice is that and also for those of you in leadership positions is that although the detail when you look at the resource for teachers is focused on teachers, it is parallel to the work for family service folks and it's parallel for home visitors so that in places where essentially there is the same expectation and even some of the same practices may be important. You will find that there are same across roles. And then there's some obviously where there are some very special roles, you know, which teachers in the way they may engage with families and the opportunities they have may be very different than a family service
worker and then there are some situations where they both have similar opportunities for engagement.

So, we urge those of you in leadership to think about looking across and those of you who are family service folks, take a look at what we proposed for teachers, and then hopefully join us when we talk about family service RBCs and take a look at some of the similarities and differences. 

Brandi: Well, Cathy, we're having confirmation too in the chat. Thank you, Sonia, she is saying that she feels like the information is great and something that's needed that she can reach out to their family service and home visiting folks on these areas and that the teaching team, I'm going to scroll up again here, haven't been able to be fully included yet. I think that goes back to what Mario said a little earlier about the real, in that, you know, there's so much that each of us carry and often we all wear different
hats and flashes, and so that makes the extra adventure. But she is saying that it's nice to hear messages from the national offices to reflect the inclusion of those component areas, and I fully agree. I mean, I really believe, not just in words, like with family engagement being everybody's business, it's not only what we say and it's not just a saying, it's science, like it's what we know to be true about how both children and their families grow.

Cathy: Those are really good points, Brandi. And, you know, there's so much sharing here with people from different backgrounds. I see Gretchen who says she's an occupational therapist. I hope that some of this resonated for you because we really feel like family engagement is everybody's business and any of you who don't have a specific role-based competency, set of competencies, please take a look at the universal or the overview handout because you're there, because we really need everybody on board. 

Brandi: And I think that's a great point, Miss Cathy. What is that old saying? I always get sayings mixed up unless it's a country saying. Then I have those pretty good. But the more hands make lighter work, it's so true. And it's a little bit of a bigger investment on the front-end, but oh my goodness, does it pay off in the long run. For all of us, not only for families and their children, for our programs and are you all ready for this part? Our community. It has that big of a ripple effect.

Cathy: Well, and I'll throw this in, Brandi, with my researcher hat on. There is some really interesting evaluation that says that that embedding family engagement practices in teaching, in early childhood actually improves the satisfaction of teachers in the context of doing their jobs, and there are even some, you know, family engagement practices, sets of family engagement practices that have also shown to do things like reduce to staff turnover with teachers, to, again, improve their view of the professional climate in their organization, and to really increase their satisfaction with their job so that they're really -- It's not only something that is really good for the families and the kids but it's also good for the professionals who engage in these practices. So, it's a win-win-win.

Brandi: Yeah, and you know, Cathy, and you keep me ominous here, well, first of all, let me say something to you guys because I don't want you to feel anxious, the one and only Nina has been able to go over into the PowerPoint file and update it for you. So, now in your File for Download pod, on the left-hand side of your screen, midway down, it has a new file that says New RBCs for teachers. So, that way you guys can go in there and download the version. That is accurate.

Again, thank you for checking our shirttail about that. So, you can do that now or whenever you're ready.

And then, Cathy, I'm having a memory of something, I certainly couldn't quote the researcher, but, you know, we often are having a lot of dialogue around children experiencing challenging behaviors or, you know, the way we say there's children that have challenges, and they have big feelings and big emotions that they're grappling with how to, you know, sort of manifest, and I seem to recall in research a while back that it said, you know, if we effectively engage families and we have that deep relationship in that  individualized way that we have, it absolutely can ultimately impact the behavior of the child and I thought, well -- Right? Am I right? Am I close?

Cathy: No, no, you're absolutely -- You've got it, Brandi, that you're absolutely right and, you know, again, what we know is at any time that a teacher is faced with talking to a parent about a difficult topic, you know, biting, think of this the first thing I used to, you know, as a mental health consultant, walk into a classroom, it was like, "Oh, what do I do?" But, you know, no matter what it is, if you've built that relationship with that family and you have really worked with them around in a strength-based way and you've regularly, you know, engaged them in conversation and partnered with them around the ongoing day-to-day things that relate to their children, then when you have to talk about something tough, you have that relationship to fall back on, and you have all those other encounters that are positive.

If you just have to come at the family, you know, with some difficult information and you don't have a relationship, it's much, much harder. So, it really does pay off, and there actually is a fair amount of research that says just what the issue that you raised, Brandi. It really does work to have the relationship.

It really -- There also some research that talks about it, it actually saves time for teachers. 

Brandi: It really does and well, and the other thing, Cathy, that I wanted to say here is how many of us- It's just kind of like a bank account, the more deposits that we all make in those relationships with families means that if we have an accidental withdrawal or a mismatch, then we still have more, you know, deposits and withdrawals. So, our relationship is still starting and can be sustained over time. So, there's a lot of reasons to make those investments or how do they say, like Austin, Austin upfront --

Mario, I've seen what Mario has, let me see if I can -- Oh, sorry, Mario, I didn't see this one come by, a challenge that I've been noticing is teachers taking that initial from step 1 and moving on 2 through 10. They seem to be more classroom focused lesson plan, classroom arrangement for -- yes, 45, yes -- Yes, I remember all of those, and it's hard to get away from the old practice of the family partnership process is just developing goals and giving resources.

Yeah, Vanessa has a little virtual high-five going in there for you. This is very real, and I'll tell you, Laurie, the one way that we've been able to make strides in this area, in service of the incredible work that teachers do and the... and the incredible amount of work that we all carry is doing what we've just been saying, like figuring out where the teachers find strength and we can celebrate those in the classroom. 

But also, like you guys did, go right to the real so they can offer what things are really hard or if the things where there are even mild challenges, and then we can actually support, like this whole connections who really being beside families in a deeper meaningful way that supports and lessens the heaviness of a lot of the other things that are very much classroom-specific, so that may sound a little too cryptic, Cathy, I'm quite sure that you'll have better words to offer. That's kind of what came to mind for me first. Yeah. 

Cathy: No. I think that sounds right to me, Brandi. I had one thing that's a bit of a different direction, but I saw that Karen here was talking about family development credential courses and working for family service folks and I wanted to say, we will really be talking about the ways in which some of these credentialing courses and programs hopefully will fit with the competencies for family service workers that we're going to be talking about next time. And that is one of our hopes, just like with teachers we hope that these competencies will also influence the field and become embedded in both university courses as well as the kind of requirements for teachers.

The same we are hoping for family service workers. And so we do know that there are credentials and there's a standard that suggest that family service workers need to obtain a credential, and we'll be talking a little bit about that next time as well. There also is a list of those credentialing programs on ECLKC if any of you are interested, those of you in the family service role.

Brandi: Well, Cathy, I know this is the time that we promised. We always worry about keeping it longer than we said because we know how much you fit into one day and all of your day. I just wanted to say again thank you, guys, so much. We're grateful to get to spend time with you. We know what things that you have in front of you and any time that we get to spend is very valued. And thank you for all of the rich sharing that you've offered today, I've certainly learned a lot and grateful always for those interactions. 

It's been great. Thank you all. We learn so much every time we do this. So, true. Well, join us again -- I believe it's October 11th and then one more time on November 1st. We're happy to help with whatever you guys need, you let us know, and we'll look forward to seeing and hearing you again real soon. Thank you, guys. Have a good rest of your day. 

Cathy: Bye, everybody.

Exploring the Relationship-Based Competencies for Early Childhood Professionals Who Work with Families

Shela Jooma: Hello everyone, and thanks for joining us this afternoon. So, hopefully you are here to discuss with us, exploring the relationship-based competencies for early childhood professionals who work with families. And, this is our third webinar in the series for the relationship-based competencies. Earlier in September we had a webinar about the overview of the RBCs, and we’ve already spoken to our teachers and child care providers, and in a few weeks, we’ll round off the series with our webinar for home visitors. So, before we get started with our presentation, I’d like to ask each of our presenters to introduce themselves. I’ll start. My name is Shela Jooma. I am with the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, and I’m a Project Manager for Resource Development. And, I will pass it off to Cathy.

Cathy Ayoub: Sounds good. Thank you, Shela. Hi, everybody. I’m Cathy Ayoub, and I’m one of the principal investigators for the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement. And, I’ve had the great fortune to be able to have a part in thinking about and writing these relationship-based competencies for family service folks. So, I’m really excited to tell you about them. I know that you’ve been alongside us and us alongside you in thinking about competencies for a long time, and we hope that this new and improved version is just what you’re looking for. So, we’re anxious to hear from you. And, I’ll pass it on to Brandi.

Brandi Black Thacker: Hi, everybody. My name is Brandi Black Thacker, and I’m the Director of T/TA and Collaboration for the National Center, and we are so excited to be with you today. Thanks for coming.

Shela: Wonderful. I’m excited to be with all of you, as well. So, our objectives for today will be to discuss how the relationship-based competencies, or as we call them for short hand, RBCs, can be used by family services professionals in their day to day work with families. And, we’ll also explore how both staff and supervisors can use the RBCs for professional development. So, as we get started, we are interested to know how familiar each of you is, or how familiar each of you are with the RBCs.

So, you’ll see a poll pop up. Thank you so much, Nina. And let us know through your response in the poll, as Brandi says, do you know it, love it, live it; do you have a general understanding, but maybe not reference them quite so regularly; are you familiar with the RBCs but are here today to learn how to better absorb their contents; or are you here and you’re like, what is an RBC?

All right, Nina, do you want to go ahead and broadcast our results? We see a number of answers in the chat too, so hopefully those are included. So, we have almost an even split between the last two responses, What is an RBC? And folks that are familiar with them in general, but that need to absorb their contents. And then, we have smaller numbers of people here with us today who have a general understanding but don’t reference them regularly, and just a few of you who breathe the RBCs every single day. So, I will now turn it over to Brandi to give us an overview of the relationship-based competencies.

Brandi: Hey, guys, it is an honor and pleasure to give you an overview of these competencies. As Cathy said, we’ve been working so hard to bring these updated new exciting, what I call the ‘sweet suite’ of materials. Let me walk you through on what we’re looking at here.

On the left-hand side, you see a green box, and that represents our universal RBC for our early childhood professionals. It’s the general document that helps to show case what we all need in our toolbox to support and work beside families. On the right-hand side of the screen, you’ll see why we’re here today, it’s what you’ve all been waiting for, which is a discussion about family service professionals, family service folks, family service advocates, workers, gurus, experts. Well, however you identify, we’re glad you’re here, and that’s what we’re going to be thinking about today, the specific document that supports and integrates your work. We also have the more specific documents, as you see in the purple box in the middle. Teacher and Child Care Providers. And also, the very last box on the bottom, for our Home Visiting colleagues. We’re very excited with the suite, and I hope you got [Inaudible].

Can you guys give us drum roll? I want to see what that looks like. Not only do we have the universal book and the family service professional book, but we have these incredible assessments that go along with them. They allow you to look at one of these ten competencies, a few other competencies, and the tiers, that we’ll learn about here in a little bit. And, we advise you to look and see where you’re confident, where you’re excited to celebrate, and you know, where you would like to enhance your own professional development pieces. And turning over, so you add in terms of the value of these documents, because I don’t think that these can be undersold.

Cathy: Well, Brandi, I think these are so important, first of all, to let you know that the relationship-based competencies that support family engagement. And by the way, you can find them if you look on the left-hand side of your screen under the section that’s called “Files for download,” and you can actually download both the Exploring the RBC Overview, as well as the RBCs for early childhood professionals who work with families. So, you can have them in your hands. The RBCs for professionals who work with families, the total document is 31 pages, and it gives you tremendous detail about the kinds of, the kind of knowledge, skills, and practices that really make up the practice of a family service professional. But then, as Brandi said, we also have these self-assessment guides, so that both you and your supervisor can go through item by item, and really take a look at what you do well, what are you really excited about that you’re, you really can do an exemplary way, what are some things you’d like to know more about, what are some of the knowledge, skills, or practices that you really aren’t quite into yet and you want to do more. So, there are lots of different options, and we hope you’ll really take advantage of the resources.

Brandi: The next thing we’re going to look at is the definition of relationship-based competency, and as you see on the screen, it’s a set of knowledge, skills, and individual practices. Now, I want you guys to remember these three words. Oh, thank you guys. Thank you for the confirmation. These three words. Knowledge, skills, and individual practices, because we’re going to come back to this a couple of times. And all these other characteristics that include attributes, behaviors, and actions that are absolutely necessary to be effective in this work. Cathy, you always add richness to this. What else would you say?

Cathy: Oh, let me see, Brandi. Well, one of the reasons that we really are using these three categories, knowledge, skills, and individual practices, is that we looked across the competencies written across disciplines, and we also looked deeply into the way in which competencies had been written for family service professionals in the back. And so, we really did a lot of background looking, and landed on these terms. We are talking about practices. Those of you who really lived and loved our previous version of the relationship-based competencies may remember that we used the words individual actions. We have stepped up here and used the word practices, because we want to ramp up the wonderful work that you’re doing, and to let you know actions are included in there. But these are really the practices that you really put together as you take the knowledge and the skill and each individual practice that you learn. So, we are moving ahead. The other thing is that these are just for you, family service professionals. The other -- the prior version of the RBCs, I think that many of you saw yourselves in it, but you know what, these are just for you. So, we’ve really built on the prior version, and have really developed these for you. So, let me stop there. And, Brandi, do you want to take the next one? Let me move ahead, and I will tell you about this until we get Brandi back on. So, you heard me use the words knowledge, skills, and practices. And, as Brandi always says, this is one of our great secrets, because we want everybody to know, a secret that everybody needs to know. So, knowledge is what professionals need to know. It’s what we learn. Then, we take that knowledge and we apply it to skills. Skills are what professionals need to be able to do. Then, you take a group of skills, and they become an individual practice, and, of course, you take a group of practices, and we put them together, and that’s the way we think and we act and we do every day. So, just to remember, professional practice, or your professional practice as a family service professional, is a combination of knowledge, skills and individual practices. And, they’re measurable, and they’re observable, and they describe what a person, what a professional needs to know, and how to do the work successfully. And, when you take a look at the document, which, again, you can download now, when you take a look at the relationship-based competencies, you will find under each competency, a list of knowledge, skills, and practices for those of you doing the direct work with families. And, next to it, you will find knowledge, skills, and practices for those of you who are supervising family services professionals. So, with that said, let’s talk about some key terms. Brandi, you want to join me for this one?

Brandi: Yeah. Let’s see how the sound works, Cathy.

Cathy: Sure.

Brandi: We’re going to get college draw, how about that, you guys will keep you posted? I think, Cathy, another thing that we want to offer here is that there is general terminology here for the entire early education field, and I’m wondering if you can speak through the way the language is expanded so it really makes a connection with everybody in early childhood. I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about. I know, like, family service professionals, a lot of folks across the country have a lot of incredible titles in how they represent family engagement, and I’m wondering if, especially if you look at teachers, childcare providers, education, like, group care folks in the way that we wrote the language across this suite, we hope that it applies to folks in many different fields, specifically in early childhood, and we made the language broad enough, with a lot of stakeholder guidance, to hopefully do just that. And, other things that are important here. We want you guys to know, love, and live the way that we think about family engagement, which so many of you have embraced.

We think of family engagement as a very deep way of being the side of family where they take the lead, and we also believe that family engagement is where the proverbial magic happens. That really means to us that parents and children progress best and most, like, perfectly when the family is engaged. So, we want you to have a deep connection to the way we think about together collectively, in the Head Start community specifically, around family engagement, and certainly as we’re doing our work within the childcare community, this is something that we’re all embracing together. The next part about parent and family is really key, because although we use those terms interchangeably here in this document, we usually lean into family more so, because we want to honor all constellations of a family. And, we want to make sure that we -- even in language, and where they are, so if it’s a biological family, foster family, adopted family, chosen family, we want to make sure that even our language represents our reverence. Cathy, could you tell us a little bit about the strengths-based perspective?

Cathy: I certainly can. So, as all of you know, we really often talk about the importance of focusing on a strengths-based perspective. And, we wanted to make sure that everyone had a definition of strengths-based perspective from the family engagement perspective or point of view. So, again, this is an approach to working with families that focuses on their interests, abilities, motivations, and resources. So, instead of focusing first on problems and needs, a strengths-based point of view sees families as capable, of capable of their own change, and capable of working toward their own goals.

Now, I want to be clear, this doesn’t mean that you don’t talk to families about difficult topics. Matter of fact, when we take a strengths-based perspective, and we really respect families and honor them as the experts, oftentimes it’s easier to talk to them about some of the difficult topics, because we’ve already acknowledged their strengths. So, this is a really important component, and a really important overview in thinking about the relationship-based competencies. So, that said, let’s really take these competencies apart. We’re going to talk about the components of the competencies, and then we’re going to really try to think about how they might fit. So, before we do that-- and Brandi, feel great to step in here -- we’d like for you just to take a minute or two, and think about the competencies if you know them, which is what competencies do you think might apply most commonly to your work, and which do you want to spend more time understanding. And, if you could tell us what you think, we’re looking, a bunch of people are writing. This is really helpful. We really want to think about this as we talk about the individual components of these competencies.

So, it looks like family engagement and family well-being seem to be really critical competencies. So, Heidi is telling us parents- child relationships really important, giving empathy, but look at all these comments. Family well-being. Parent-child interactions. That’s a big one. Family well-being. Families as learners. A lot of emphasis on family engagement, and how important it is to really engage with families. Respecting the family and understanding where they are as a family; families as advocates and leaders; positive parent-child relationships, again. That one comes up over and over again, doesn’t it? And, positive goal-oriented relationships. I think that’s all that, a number of people, I think, are using family engagement to mean that. Respect of cultures. That’s another really important one. Families as leaders. Meeting the family’s needs. Wow. You guys are really right-on.

This is really great. Really great. So, we’re harkening to the outcome. So, now you have all these great thoughts. Take a look at how the things that you’re thinking match with the relationship-based competencies that we’re going to talk about with some specificity right now. And, I can tell some of you are familiar with them, but others, I love it, data-driven services. Wow. You’re making me feel wonderful. I feel like we really are kind of hitting a home run here in terms of thinking about what these all mean.

So, please keep writing, keep giving us suggestions, but I’m going to move, and really unpack the competencies. So, see, as you consider these two questions, whether or not you can find the things that you think you use most commonly in your work in the competencies. So, let’s take a look. What are they? And, we’re going to take these one by one. We’re really going to talk about them. Here are the first four. And, let’s unpack them a little bit. The first one is positive goal-oriented relationships.

And, there’s a reason why this one is first. Matter of fact, I challenge you to take a look at the order of the competencies, because they’re not just random. We really did try to put them in an order that would be really meaningful for you. And, many of you have talked about family engagement. You’ve talked about connecting with families. You’ve thought about really having a way to connect with families and their goals, and that’s really one of the reasons. Those are all the reasons why positive goal-oriented relationships are first.

So, this is really when the family service professional engages in mutually respectful, positive, and goal-oriented partnerships with families, to promote both the positive family and the positive child outcomes. Really core to everything you do, our relationships with families really help us execute all the rest of the competencies. But the second competency actually goes along with the first. It’s self-aware and culturally responsive relationships. This is where as a family service professional you respect and respond to the cultures, languages, values, and family structures of each family.

So, if you take competencies 1 and 2, and you really put them together, that really sets the stage for your approach as a family service professional in working with families. Then, if you take 3 and 4, these competencies begin to really identify and designate specific areas of focus or of content for you as a family service worker when you or a family advocate, when you’re working with families. And so, number 3 is -- Many of you mentioned it. Right? Family well-being and families as learning, as learners. So, you’re supporting a family’s reflections on planning for and implementation for their well-being. So, we’re talking about safety, we’re talking about health, physical and mental health. We’re talking about their education, their own learning as adults. We’re talking about their well-being in a number of different ways. Do they live in neighborhoods that are safe? Do they live in neighborhoods that are healthy? Do they have relationships with family that are positive and supportive? And then, their life

goals: where do they want to be? How do they see their lives moving forward as they identify as parents in the context of their everyday work? And then, there’s 4. Parent-child relationships and families as lifelong educators. So, these are essentially partners, ways in which we partner with families to build strong parent-child relationships, to support those relationships, and to support parents as they’re first and lifelong educators for their children. So, this is where we’re moving from our relationships which we build with families and wanting to -- we think about their well-being, and then we move to thinking about how do we support them in their relationships with their children, and as teachers for their children.

So, these are critically -- these are four critical areas. But we’re not done yet. So, let’s look at the next set. Well, before we do that, actually we’re doing an example, and Shela, feel free to jump in if you’d like, because we’re going to talk about an example of the knowledge, skills, and practices for family service professionals. And, we’re going to look at competency 1. So, we’ve gone from this larger view of positive goal-oriented relationships, but what does it mean from the perspective of knowledge, Skill, and practices?

So, let’s look. If you take a look at the very first knowledge bullet, for those of you that have the document, you’ll see it really talks about having the family service professional understand effective relationship-building practices with parents, families, children, and professionals. Once you have that knowledge base, what’s the skill? It’s a skill that you have that helps families feel safe and respected. And, how do you do it? You do it by building mutually trusting relationships over time.

Then, you embed that skill into the practice, which allows you to meet families when they first enroll in a program, and you learn about each family’s situation and their goals. So, this is an example that’s very specific to those of you who are doing family service work. Now, let me point it out to you that this is not the only knowledge bullet, skill bullet, or practice bullet under positive goal-oriented relationships. I’m looking at them here now, and when you look at the knowledge area under positive family goal-oriented relationships, there are five additional bullets around knowledge; there are six for skills; and I believe there are seven for practices.

So, as we build out each competency, there are a whole series of knowledge bullets, skill bullets, and practice bullets that really provide a whole list of the areas in which you might choose to concentrate to build your practice skills. So. And I see that Brandi is pointing out that you can go download the RBCs, and if you go to files for download on the left of your screen, you can actually download them now. You can also find them on ECLKC. So, please feel free, and you can even follow along in the document if you’d like. I’m going to move forward, and let’s take a look at the next three RBCs. Okay.

Before I go on to describe each of these, I want to say to those of you who know the RBCs, you’re going to find that these are the same RBCs that were in our prior materials where we had a single resource that was called relationship-based competencies. And so, we didn’t --   we didn’t start all over; we built on those RBCs that some of you know and love. And, we did move forward. We did add one, and some of you -if anyone knows which one we added, I won’t tell you right away. But see if any of you can guess. You can let me know in chat. But let’s talk about these. So, you can see with RBCs 5, 6, and 7, we’re moving from the core issues around how are we with families around goal- directed, building goal-directed relationships, and really understanding the important practices around culture and cultural sensitivity, to then thinking about two key areas of family well-being, and parent-child relationships and parents as teachers. We’re now moving first from how we are to the core work with families, and now – now we’re thinking about families in the context of community.

So, number 5 is family connections with peers in community, and this is ways in which the family service professional works to strengthen their support network and connections with other parents and community members who can address the family’s strengths, interests, and challenges. So, here’s where family service folks really work to connect families beyond the program, to community members that, and to their peers, for support and for resources. Then, number 6 follows quite nicely, because this is around family access to community resources. And so, there’s very specific focus on really helping families and walking alongside them to understand how to use community resources to make progress toward their outcomes. And then, finally here, number 7 is leadership and advocacy.

And so, I’m wondering, did anyone guess which one is new? Actually, it’s leadership and advocacy. Because it was so important. I would say, look, look, Erica knows, Olivia knows, Anna knows, 777. Yes. Yes. Look at this. Elizabeth. Wow, you guys are great. You’ve got it. Leadership and advocacy, how often can you think about -- can you think about the times when you’ve really connected and worked and walked alongside parents to support their ability to build their own strengths as advocates for their families, and leaders, both in the program and in the community. So, this is really what we thought was a critical RBC, and you told us it was.

And so, now we've -- we have definitely added it. So, let’s look at an example, and here’s an example for supervisors of family services professionals. And, what do you know, we’re talking about leadership and advocacy. So, what are the knowledge, skills, supervisory practices, and even leadership practices that the supervisors of those of you working on the ground with families should be providing? First of all, a supervisor should understand how the professionals with whom she or he works can support parent leadership and advocacy, both in the program and in the community.

Having that knowledge should then lead the supervisor to have skills to be able to offer skills-based training for family services professionals, and how to engage and support families. How do we really help as family services professionals to support families to be leaders and advocates? And so, the expectation here is that supervisors would really be able to offer that skill. So, now, a supervisor may deliver training directly, or they may arrange for someone with expertise to deliver the training on their behalf to their staff. So, those of you who are supervisors, don’t panic. You really don’t have to do it all yourself. But the aim here is to really say that those of you providing direct service should be looking for the support of your supervisors to be able to provide you with this information, and that that should then lead to supervisory practices that build opportunities for parent input, advocacy, and leadership in all aspects of the program. And, that the leaders in the program, even beyond supervisors, but the entire leadership of a program, should be involved -- that leadership team should be involved in enacting policies and processes that engage families in planning, implementing, and evaluating change at the program level. And, this should be part of the program decision-making and governance processes that make sense. I see a number of comments here which are really interesting. I see Olivia talking about parent community members as well as policy council. Think those are just some of the people we were talking about around advocacy.

And, also comments about supervisors, because most supervisors and staff can provide skills around leadership and advocacy. It looks like Rebecca has some really interesting comment around a discussion of a depressed mom and the first step to leadership would be to get out of bed and take that first step and get the child to school. Yes. Sometimes it’s step by step, and interesting if we see that as leadership and advocacy, it may be a way to capture that parent. There actually is some really wonderful material for parents that says, “Are you a depressed parent? Can you be a good parent?” Yes. You bet you can. And, that kind of positive approach, and interestingly enough, using advocacy and leadership may be one helpful one. Oh, keep going. I love these examples.

And, absolutely, I’m counting on Shela and Brandi. Brandi, keep giving us comments in chat if you’d like, and Shela, feel free to step in. But I’m going to keep going because I want to get through all of these. Okay. Here are the last three. There are 10. So, these last three take us from the specific, kind of, areas of work that we have as family service professionals, to the more global responsibilities that we have to our organization and to ourselves. So, let’s take a look at them. So, we’re switching gears here a little bit, folks. Number 8, coordinated, integrated, and comprehensive services. And, more than almost anyone else, in a center, the family service professional is the person who connects the dots, who works with the other professionals and agencies to really support the coordinated, integrated, and comprehensive services that families need. And, you often do it across, within the organization, across the organization, in the community, and really, throughout those systems. Really important job. Really, really important job. Number 9 is data-driven services and continuous improvement. The notion here is that each of you as family service professionals should collect information, build your knowledge all the time, and collect information joining families with families, and then reflect with them to help inform goal setting, planning and implementation.

And, hopefully, this will affect a number of things. It will affect progress and outcomes for the families, for their children, for your program, for your community, but also to help you reflect on your own practices. So, data-driven services lead to continuous improvement, lead to continuous learning on your own part, and continuous learning for families, children, programs, and communities. So, this is particularly important, or these two are particularly important, when we know that we tend to have siloed systems.

And, I think -- Oh, Heidi’s already said it for me. Look at this. And she’s even mentioning number 8 here. There are so many siloed systems. Heidi, you’re so right. And, it’s really important to think about how we can bring those silos together. I had a great mentor say to me early in my career that I had to be very active in bringing people together and bringing silos together, because it didn’t happen naturally; that in our professional lives, we would kind of do what they say, put your nose to the grindstone, and I do my work and I have lots to do, and when we work with families, oftentimes we’re very busy, and there’s lots to do and lots to think about. But thinking about how to make the connections and how to make those for parents, how to integrate services for them so things aren’t quite so siloed, is something that takes active work. And, I always remembered that.

That was a very wise, wise person who said that to me. And, I see that you all are really having some great discussions about a number of issues that may relate to these three, and we’ll get to the third one in a minute. And, I see lots of agreement here, you know, discussion about some of the difficult things to handle. What do you do when children are absent?  You know? You call their parents, do you make those connections for them, do you integrate systems in your community, do you look at early intervention, do you pull those things together? Lots of ways to do this, both within your own organization and out in the community.

Anna’s saying it’s always important to keep in touch with parents and to make sure the children are safe, and let them know we care. So important, so important to make those connections. That is part of coordinated, integrated, and comprehensive, isn’t it? So, let me go to number 10. Professional growth. This is the competency that reflects back to you as a family service professional, as a family advocate, the kind of professional presentation and the kinds of guidelines and ethics, as well as the active opportunities that are really yours to seek around ongoing professional development related to family engagement. So, this is the competency, last but not least, that really helps think about -- so what -- if I take a step back, what does my professional practice look like? What are the things that I need to consider for my own growth? What do I need to think about around my issues?

How do I manage boundaries? How do I handle difficult situations? How do I really look for and expect support from my supervisor? So, there we are. So this is all 10. Let’s actually go back to chat, and I’ve asked, you guys have been talking to each other a lot, this is wonderful. But I’d like for you to think about these questions. Let’s take the first question first. Tell me, now that we’ve talked about all 10, which of the RBCs apply most commonly to your work? Which one, or ones, would you pick out first and say “Yes, this is what I really need to think about in doing my work?" And, I can even -- Shela, you’re welcome to help me if you want to help me think about and look and see what people say.

Shela: Sure, I’d love to. And, as folks are entering their -- they’re taking some time to think about it and entering their thoughts, I just wanted to point everyone to the resources that we have on the left side of the screen. So, there are two different pods where you can access resources for today’s webinar. There’s one that’s called web link, where you can go to the ECLKC to view and download the Relationship-Based Competencies. There’s a two-step process to access; one, you actually have to click on the link that you want to open, and then a button right underneath it will become available to you that says browse to.

And, the same process would work for the files to download, so in that pod, there’s a one-page handout that has all ten of the RBCs, as well as another handout that has the slides for today’s presentation. I just wanted to point folks there as you’re entering your responses to these check questions, and I see folks coming in with all different competencies that they want to work on next. I see a lot of 4 and 6 and 9, you know, everything ranging from 1 to 10, Cathy. There’s really, you know, all of them are almost equally popular. Family connections to peers and communities is the number 5, culturally responsive and self-aware relationships is number 2. I think they range all the way throughout.

Cathy: Look at this. And, some people are really saying like, 1 to 10. You’d take them all. And then, some people have really Said, “I’m going to focus on 9. I really want to do, you know, data-driven services and continuous improvement.” Or even number 10 and think about professional growth. So, I’m so pleased, it sounds like these are really resonating with you. And, the other thing that we really wanted you to see as we’re thinking about this is that each of you may have a different place where you want to start with these RBCs, and you don’t really --   Don’t ever feel like you have to right now address all of them at the same time. Ideally, in the future, we’re really building our practice as happens with any of us who are working with families every day. And, yes, there are effective things you can do around all 10. But you may want to focus on three of them. Some of you, like, Brandi, I see here, is energetic. Wow, they’re 1 to 7 there. But they are all connected, aren’t they? That’s the other thing.

Shela: Cathy, we’ve got an interesting question coming in about how the RBCs for the different roles- the different role-specific RBCs are similar or different from each other. Linda asks, “Are the RBCs for family service professionals different from the RBCs for home visitors, or are they pretty similar?”

Cathy: Oh, that is a great question. And, my answer is in some ways they’re very similar, but in some ways they really are very specific to each role. And, let me tell you a little bit about what’s similar and what isn’t. The ten that you see up on your screen now, with our chat questions, those ten RBCs, you will find across the role of family service, the role of a teacher, and the role of a home visitor. But once you dig down underneath those general categories and you take a look at the individual knowledge, skills, and practices, that’s where you will begin to see the differences, because, you know, our notion is that family engagement is everybody’s business. And, if that’s really true, shouldn’t we all share at a high level a set of relationship-based competencies that can be applied?

So, if you’re a family service professional, you should be able to go to your fellow teacher, or to the home visitor in your early head start program, and have some common language around the relationship-based competencies. And, that’s the reason that at a high level of these 10, we kept them the same. But when you take a look at what the knowledge, skills and practices are that lead to having you as a family service professional, for example, practice number 3, family well-being and families as learners, on the ground that’s going to look somewhat different than the way the teacher is going to be actually executing that RBC. And so, you’ll find, when you get into the details, that the knowledge, skills, and practices are really fairly different. Now, there are some -- there are some areas of knowledge, some areas of skill, and some areas of practice that are really similar across all three of these roles.

And so, you may find, you may go -- and I challenge you -- take a look at the resource, the guide for early childhood professionals who work with children and groups, a.k.a. teachers and family childcare providers. In that case, you will essentially be able to track and to see that there are some skills that are really important for everyone to have. And, as you might imagine, in RBCs 1 and 2, a lot of the ways in which you build goal-oriented relationships may be similar if you’re a teacher, if you’re a family service worker, if you’re a home visitor. There are some specifics that are going to be different. Ways in which you may be self-aware and develop culturally responsive relationships.

There may be lots of similarities that you can talk to your colleagues about. However, when you get down to some of the details, because of your individual roles, you actually may have different opportunities and different ways of engaging with families. And, as a family service professional, your responsibility to families is in some way more directed and broader than the role of a teacher who is going to be working and dealing with families in the context of his or her classroom and children. That doesn’t mean that the teacher won’t have very strong and important relationships with those families, but she is seen in a different context. So, this is part of the reason why we did what we could to make, to show the similarities across roles, but also wanted to make sure that they were very specific; I hope for each role, as well. So, I hope that answer made some sense. So, we have another question here: which do you want to spend more time understanding? So, let’s move to the next question, and let us know, is there one of these competencies that you’re thinking, “Ah, I need to work more on this one?”

And, I see Heidi’s saying number 7. Now, number 7 is our new one. Anna’s looking at number 9. I’m a data person, so I love that one. Number 2. really around culture and cultural sensitivity and responsiveness. This is interesting. Look, we’re getting some patterns here. I’m a real data person, so look at a lot of 9’s, of 8’s and 7’s. So, it’s really interesting. Thank you, that’s really helpful. So, thinking about data-driven services and continuous improvement is something that people. Oh yes, Brandi, I’m elated that there are 9’s. Brandi knows me way too well. Absolutely. But I think that’s interesting. And again, people may have really different ideas, but this is so interesting, that a lot of folks are really interested in thinking about data-driven services. Also, again, I mean, but Heather’s saying also number 7. Again, very important to think about in respect to families, i’s not always easy to get them involved in leadership. That is very true. That is very true. And Phyllis is really saying number 2 because she thinks that there often may be cultural barriers. Absolutely. Wow. Lots of great ideas.

Shela: Cathy has spoke, think about what they are interested in learning more about. Can we jump ahead to the part   on professional development?

Cathy: Yep. Yes. And I will do that quickly. We wanted to share with you some of the key terms related to professional development, that is really highlighted in competency number 10. So just to mention, we wanted to start by mentioning coaching. And many of you may have heard about coaching in the context of the classroom. We’d like to suggest that this is really also great medium for moving from knowledge to skills to practice around family engagement. And so, this is really a type of professional development which I think many of you know, in which an individual with knowledge and experience and skill in being a coach comes into a partnership with you as the family service professional, and they observe your work, they encourage reflection, they offer feedback and they support goal setting to really help you master these skills and really turn them into really effective practices. Now, coaching isn’t the only medium of professional development, and I want to go to the bottom here. Reflective practice is also a really helpful way of moving from knowledge to practice. And that is really taking the time to think about what’s happened, what’s happening and what should happen next. And reflection really informs our professional practice and improves our daily ability to communicate. And we take that a step further and think about reflective supervision, which is also critically important, again, we never want to talk about all of us doing the work on the ground without thinking about our supervisors. So, to really engage with supervisors that facilitate reflection on all of the hard work that we do every day with families, is really important. A couple of other key terms here: we want you to think about organizational cultures, culture, and really have you think about that shared assumptions, beliefs, values and goals that help guide you as staff and guide your interactions and the functioning of an organization.

So, the organizational culture will make a great deal of difference in how you are able to do your work. We then want you to acknowledge parallel process. That’s a process that occurs when an individual’s behaviors and practices are similar to behaviors and practices and interactions of others working in parallel, and you often model for families and supervisors often model for their supervisees, do with each other. And finally, professional boundaries. And this is always one, at least for me, that is so important. What are the limits of my professional responsibility and role in working with families? So the RBCs encourage professional relationships with families, but it does mean that boundaries identify lines to be respected and not to be crossed in interactions with others, and we have to think about that as a two-way street. So as professionals, we carefully consider the difference between professional and personal relationships, and turn to our peers, our supervisors, for guidance and support in assessing how this works. And also know about ethical guidelines and relationship boundaries.

So, I will leave you with those thoughts, because I know we’re getting very close to end of time. I think we mentioned these resources, and we’ve told you where to find them urge you to take a look at them, both the resources around the RBCs for family service professionals and the self-assessments. And we’re going to remind you that this is all about building your capacity and your professional growth and development. So keep thinking about knowledge skills and individual practices. I’m going to move ahead a little bit and say a little bit about additional resources. We want to make sure that you know about the credentialing option for family service professionals that are on ECLKC, and the hope would be that you would take a look at these competencies, and if you’re looking at a degree credential or certificate, you would

ask: do they give me these skills? Do they really help me? And this is just a picture of what the degree program’s database looks like on an ECLKC, and I urge you, if you are, if you don’t have a credential yet, if you’re thinking about credentialing, take a look at the database. We hope it will help you. But also now you have a guide to match to what you’re going to be learning in a given credentialing program. So, I’m going to move on, just remind everybody. And Shela, do you want to jump in here? But we have one more relationship-based competency webinar, and that will be relationship-based competencies for home visitors. And that’s on November 1.

Shela, any last words?

Shela: Okay. Just one final point, that everyone who’s joined the webinar today will receive an email with a link to our survey, and after you complete the survey you’ll be able to download a certificate. If you joined with colleagues, then ask your colleagues to forward that email to you so that you can also fill out the survey, so that everyone gets their own certificate. And then finally, stay on for 15 minutes after the top of the hour, so that we can continue chatting. There are so many great questions and comments, and we want to be able to continue networking with you.

Thanks so much, everyone, and have a great afternoon.

Exploring the Relationship-Based Competencies for Early Childhood Professionals Who Make Home Visits

Shela Jooma: So, hello and welcome to Exploring the Relationship-Based Competencies for Early Childhood Professionals Who Make Home Visits. This is the fourth webinar in our series for the Relationship-Based Competencies.

You may have joined us earlier in the past couple of months for the Overview, for the RBCs for Teachers and Child Care Providers and for RBCs for Family Services Professionals. So, we’ll start with “Welcome and Introductions." You’ve been hearing my voice, I’m Shela Jooma. I’m a project manager with the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, and I have been working on this webinar series, as well as the resources related to the Relationship-Based Competencies. So, I’m excited to be with you this afternoon and I will ask Cathy and then Brandi to introduce themselves.

Cathy Ayoub: Thank you, Shela. Hi everyone, I'm Cathy Ayoub. I’m one of the principal investigators for the National Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, and I’ve actually had the great privilege of shepherding these Competencies through the process, both in our first iteration back a number of years ago and now this suite of Competencies. One of the most important of which is the Competencies for home visitors. So, I’m really pleased to be here to talk about them today. Brandi.

Brandi Black Thacker: Thanks, Cathy. Hey, everybody. It is so good to be with you, even for the first time or again, we’re glad to spend our few moments. It feels like it always goes so fast to the topic instead ideas that we love to think about together and more importantly, with you. My name is Brandi Black Thacker and I’m the director of T/TA and Collaboration for the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement. And what we’re going to do next is have Shela walk us through the objectives to see what we have proposed for today and we’re just jumping in. Lots of good stuff to talk about.

Shela: Thank you, Brandi. That’s right. So, our objectives for today are to discuss how the relationship- based Competencies can be used specifically by home visitors in your work with families in their homes. And we’ll also talk about how you might use the Relationship-Based Competencies for professional development. And we realize that this is the fourth webinar in our series and we have had the opportunity to present the Relationship-Based Competencies in other settings. So, I will ask our Adobe Connect producer to open up our pool and we want to find out from you where and how you’ve done this before. So, have you joined all four of the previous ones in our series? Have you joined some of the previous webinars? We also did a similar webinar for the home visitor series led by my colleagues at the National Center for Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning.

Were you on that one? Or is this the first webinar you’re joining? We recognize that some of you wear multiple hats in your program and so maybe you're learning about how the Competencies apply to the various roles that you fill. Some of you are supervisors and you supervise people in different roles. So, the Competencies are really relevant to a lot of different folks in the area of early childhood development and we realize that some of you may have joined us in a number of different venues.
So, where have you heard from us? For a lot of you, this is the first webinar an and an almost equal number have joined some of the webinars before. A few people have joined all four. Seems like we have a fan club for the Relationship-Based Competencies and if you’re just joining us, we’re just looking at if you’ve joined the series on the Relationship-Based Competencies before. All right, just another few seconds to get your responses and then we’ll keep us moving forward through this presentation. A few of you are letting us know in the chat whether this is your first or second or fourth webinar.

All right, I’m going to go ahead and broadcast the results. You can see what we’ve heard from you. So, the majority, almost 50 percent say that this is the first webinar on the Relationship-Based Competencies.

Similarly, some of you have joined previous webinars and a small number have joined all four, Nina can you go ahead and close the poll? Thank you so much.
Great. So, I will now ask Brandi to take us forward and let us know what are the Relationship-Based Competencies.

Brandi: Thank you, Shela. Thank you so much. Well, we’re happy to be back with so many of you and equally as excited to have many of you for the first time. The web took off with what are these elusive RBCs, as we call them lovingly for short. The Relationship-Based Competencies. Cathy alluded to this a little in her opening remarks when she said hello and introduced herself, but this is really a second or third iteration. If you guys have been aware of Competencies that have been and were established for folks who walk beside and for families, they go back to at least 2001 and in our first five years at the National Center, we established alongside OHS a second version of those and this is the new and improved updated what I call the sweet suite materials. Let me walk you through what you see on the screen here. So, you’ll have a grounding in how these things are organized, so when you jump into the version that is specific to home visitors, you’ll know how it all fits together.

The thing that you see on the left-hand side of your screen in the green box, is what we call the overview of the Relationship-Based Competencies. And this is for all of us who work in early childhood fields to use for our own trajectory as we walk beside families. Now, you guys have a very exciting and important role, because you get to play and share several levels of expertise as home visitors. Not only how you partner directly with the adult in the family to serve toward the child development, but certainly you’re in a relationship with the child as well and it can be in the family’s home space.

So, you have a lot of incredible things that you bring into that space and one of the things that this green book, or the universal one is written for is for all of us. Things that are consistent that we all need in our toolbox or toolbelt, if you will, as we walk beside families. At the top, on the right-hand side, you'll see that we wrote one also specific for family service folks. One of the things that we’ll talk about also here in a little bit is we made the language embedded throughout each of these documents super broad so it can connect with many folks in the early childhood community. And one of the things that I think you'll love about this is that it’s been crosswalked.

Each of these have been crosswalked with multiple other paradigms, discipline and other fields. So, for those of you that are enhancing what you do in your program in other ways, like with other codes of ethics or other even, like, you know the NAECY code, these align so nicely. I think you’ll see, you let us know as we get deeper in, but you'll notice the broad language like family service professionals, that’s really to resonate with not only how we do what we do within Head Start and Early Head Start, but for other folks who work within early childhood community. The second one down you’re going to see is for teachers and child care providers.

This is mostly center-based care, you might imagine. Folks who work with children in group settings. And certainly, last but not least, we’ve been so excited to get to connect with you guys, the document that’s specific for you as home visitors. We’re going to get into some detail around this as we go on this afternoon, but I want to also share with you in this suite of materials, we have these incredible assessments. These are pictured on the right-hand side of your screen. The part I love, one of the many parts I love about the Relationship-Based Competencies, not only do you have these concrete ideas of knowledge, skills and practices that are necessary to work toward these Competencies, but we actually created these assessments that go along with it. Not only for home visitors and the other roles that we talked about, but their supervisors.

So, you can use these as your own way to assess where you are and where you want to go with the professional. Your supervisors can use these for looking at where they are. They can help walk besides you in a reflective practice type way. These things just have no bounds. I mean, folks have been using them in all kinds of ways that we hoped, and in many ways that we could have never predicted. So, we want to give you a heads up about these right up front. Not only do you have the green universal book and the blue book that’s specific to home visitors, but you have these assessments that coincide and folks have found very beneficial in their work.

So, we want to see this as the Relationship-Based Competencies so our tech goddess Miss Nina is going to switch us over to a poll that asks how familiar you are with RBCs, those Relationship-Based Competencies. So, click here. You know it. You love it. You live it. You have it memorized. These are for long-term users of the RBCs. You might have known of them in a previous iteration. And we want to know specifically, if you had a peep at these current ones. So, you know it, you love it, you live it. And the second one is “I have a general understanding, but I have to reference it regularly.” I know what they are and the acronyms, but not regular use. And the third one is, “I'm familiar with it, but I'm ready to absorb some more.” Like, tell me more.

And then the last one, “What is an RBC?” Which many of you said you're joining for the first time, so we’re happy to help with that part.

So, let’s see some voting here. Many of you are familiar but want to know more. It looks like we have a front runner here of you guys are familiar but want to better absorb the contents. Looks about like half of us and then there’s a pretty heated split between “I have a general understanding” and “What is an RBC?”

Take just a couple more seconds to lock in your vote and then we’ll publish the results, so you can see what we look like as a whole group. All right, let’s broadcast. This is how it fell out. About half of us are familiar but want to absorb more. Others have a general understanding and then folks, some of you are just being introduced for the first time. So, we hope to have something for everybody here today and there is a percentage of you who know it well, live it, have it memorized. So, feel free to chime in in general chat and teach us all of your ways. We certainly want to create this space to learn from each other as well. All right. We’re going to transition back to the regular view here. So, if you were in mid-sentence typing, you can pick it right back up on this side. But what we would really like to do now is talk a little bit about what are these RBCs in the first place and there is nobody that can do that better than the one and only, Dr. Cathy Ayoub. So, I’m going to turn it over to her to speak to the definition.
Cathy: Thank you, Brandi. So, what are we talking about? What are these Relationship-Based Competencies? They’re really a set of knowledge. So, what we know. Skills, what we can do. They involve personal practices and then this whole group of other characteristics. Attributes, behaviors, actions - that are really necessary for us to be good practitioners. Confident practitioners in our family engagement work and home visiting. So, it’s really important to think about, kind of, all these things together and looking at all the different dimensions of Competencies and what would make up a competency. Brandi.

Brandi: Now, Cathy, you know what I like to do on this spot. I need you guys to put a pin on these first three words and inaudible Remember, knowledge, skills, and individual practices, because we are going to come back to those and I’d like to tease, well, just a little bit, and say these are a secret decoder ring for how to use this document. So, let me tell you a little bit about what I mean here. Knowledge, skills and practices. I’d describe these as the three tiers, if you will, that live under the umbrella of each competency. So, you know, I’m not very good at math, but I’m going to throw some numbers out. There are ten Competencies overall. Each of the Competencies has these three tiers or layers underneath. And Listen to this formula.

This is really useful. You can see here how we’ve operationally defined each of these, but knowledge is what we know, the skills are what we need to be able to do and then the practices give those concrete key examples of what we actually do. So, those three things together, you see how we have that cute little design. Knowledge + skills + practices = over to the right, in the blue bubble, professional practice. And look how we did. This is the combination of those three things that are measurable, observable, I'm pausing here on observable. Home visitors also have the requirement in head start for coaching. We know that being able to observe all the incredible things that you do within the construct of your work is a big part of that coaching piece.

So, that word is really critical for this discussion in particular. So, measurable, observable and describe what a person needs to know about how to do their work successfully. So, each of these pieces are really key in that, you know, pun intended, that they really inform where you're going to go with these in service of making progress toward the Competencies. And actually, we want to tell you little bit more about some of the key terminology and Cathy’s going to take

Cathy: Thank you, Brandi. So, there were a couple of, Really three key terms that we wanted to make sure that were clear. So, family engagement. We know it’s an interactive process. We know it really involves the exchange of information and ideas where providers and other professionals, in this case, those of you home visitors, family members and children, really together build positives. In other words, strength-based positive relationships. But they're also goal-directed, which means that as home visitors, we really have a focus on how is it that we want to support the well-being and the ability of parents to learn with all of our seven outcomes in the PFCE framework that really support children and their positive outcomes.

So, we have these goals in mind and we use our positive relationship with families to build them. That’s really what we’re talking about here. So, it’s doing with families, not for them. It’s partnering for them. It's thinking about this at the program level. It's really supporting families to be able to set goals to choose for themselves and then again, as we’ve said to work with families and with other professionals in the community and with other people within our programs to really promote family progress in the context of also thinking about equity, inclusiveness and cultural and linguistic responsiveness. So, that’s a lot to take in there, but we wanted to make sure that we had that comprehensive definition of family engagement. So, when we talk about parents and families, we also wanted to make sure that we could think about both parents and families through different cultural lenses, through different family constellation or orientation lenses, but we did want you to know that when we talk about parents and families, we’re talking about the adults who really have responsibilities for caregiving, both legal, formal and informal in working with the children that are really those children for which we have some responsibility to serve.

And finally, we really wanted to emphasize strength-based perspectives or approaches and obviously, this is an approach that many of you now know. As Brandi said, “love and live.” That really helps us focus on the interests, abilities, motivations and resources when working with families. So, instead of focusing only on problems in the strength-based approach, we really see families as capable; as experts around their own children and really having the capacity to work to achieve their goals. Now, that doesn't mean that we don’t together partner with families to really support them in thinking about difficult issues or difficult situations, but it does mean that we approach this from a positive, strength-based perspective. So, Brandi, back to you.

Brandi: Thank you, Cathy. Excuse me. We have some really good questions in the chat and I wanted to address a couple of things real quick, because you know, we need to know about our logistical bits here. One thing I want you guys to reference, Over on the left-hand side we have some web links, that you probably see about midway down your screen. You can actually click those to go see the resources that we mentioned a little earlier, it’ll take you away from this screen. So, just fair warning in case you hit those. But you have to click on each one and then the button that says “browse to” will activate. It will take you away once that happens, when you click “browse to”. The other thing that we want to make sure that you, see are the files for download, we have the overview document in there and we have the home visitors document in there. So, I want to make sure that if you want those and you want to download them and have them on your computer readily available, those are there for you as well. We also have all of this good stuff on the ECLKC. So, you can go find that anytime that you are ready for it. It'll be there for you for free to go download. So, we wanted to point those out. The other thing here is, I wanted to just honor some of the comments that were coming through.

A couple of you had asked, “Is this new information? This looks similar to a webinar that we might have sit in on before.” Yes, there is some information here at the beginning that we like to offer to get everybody solidified on and around, so we all are coming from the same space. We’re about to pivot, really soon actually, to those information-specific to home visitors. With that, Cathy, I know we want to talk through the components of the RBCs that are specific to the home visitors, and we want you guys to be thinking here, as we go through these, because Cathy is going take you through each one, and while they’re organized in a certain way, just so you have some of these tips and tricks from the authors and the intentionality. So, as you use them, you will have those shortcuts. We want you to be thinking about which one of these RBCs do you think apply most commonly to your work. One or a couple, and which one or ones do you want to spend more time understanding. So, this is a little bit of like a planting of a seed, because we’re going to ask you this after we go through all ten. Cathy, let’s look at these quickly and see what everybody thinks.

Cathy: Sounds good, Brandi. Well, first of all, I want to commend the folks who are saying, “Hey, some of this sounds familiar.” We’ve heard this before. Yes. One of the things that you'll notice, if you take a look across the suite, is that there are ten major categories or areas, competency areas, that we’re suggesting home visitors address.
These are the same large categories for the other role-based family engagement Competencies. And that was really very intentional, because at a high level it makes sense that all of you working with families in care programs would really have the same larger goals. However, you'll see as we talk about each of these ten in the context of home visiting, there's lots of detail around the ways in which you may concretely have special knowledge that you need. Here's Brandi’s decoding, remember?

Knowledge that you really need. Skills that you really may want to develop that are specific to being a home visitor And working with that family in their home and individual practices that also may be very specific and unique to your roles as home visitors. So, what we’ve tried to do here is not only talk about what’s very specific to what you do and think about, you know, how would you go about doing this? But also take this up so that you can have a common language with which to talk to your colleagues in center-based care, to talk to your supervisors, to talk to family service folks. So, you will see both similarities and hopefully, as we really dig more deeply today, some of the specifics. So, with that said, here are the first four Relationship-Based Competencies for home visitors. The first four categories.

Let's think about those, both generally and in the context of home visiting. Another secret and Brandi, I hope you’ll say more about this, is that there is an intentional order to the listing of these Competencies. The first two really help you think about your overall orientation and relationship with families. So, the first one is positive goal-oriented relationships and we’re looking to have home visitors engage in mutually respectful positive goal-oriented relationships. They’re those key three words in working with families.

Again, the goal is ultimately to promote positive child and family outcomes. So, there may be a number of different ways that you as home visitors are building relationships with families, because you're being invited into family's homes. You have some unique opportunities for developing positive goal-oriented relationships in some very specific ways. So, as you download the documents that Brandi mentioned are over on the left side of your screen, you will see a lot of detail listed around knowledge, skills and practices for each of these larger categories. And so, if you take a look now under what you see for goal-oriented relationships, you'll see that there are list of anywhere from five to ten knowledge points, five to ten skill points and five to ten practice points. We go to the second one, Self-aware and Culturally Responsive Relationships. Again, this is respecting in response – and responding to values, language, cultures, family structures for each family and really identifying the family as unique. You have a special opportunity to do this as a home visitor because you actually get to see the way that families build their homes, and I know many of you know that is a real plus; you get a vision of the family. Then we go to 3 and 4 and we're now really starting to build on some of the major areas of focus in your practice as home visitors. So, number 3, Family Well-being and Families as Learners. As adult learners we never stop learning. So, the home visitor supports the family's reflections on and planning for their safety, health, education well-being and life goals.

And this encompasses, you know, all the wonderful positive enrichment activities and exercises and practices that we engage in with our children and our families as well as it addresses some of the kinds of adversities that families and children can experience. Number 4, Parent-child Relationships and Families as Lifelong Educators. Again, as a home visitor you are in a unique position to really support and promote parent-child relationships in the context of the everyday activities and routines, that you have the privilege to observe in a family's home. You also are there to support families as the first and most significant teachers for their children. And often times you may be one of the first professionals that is able to engage with the family in the context of supporting that parent in providing a system for helping that child learn. So, I saw a question down in here. So, if it's okay, I would just going to answer. Claudia had a question about are the RBCs research based? So, I will count on you Brandi to to tell me when to move on but I wanted to address that just briefly. In writing Relationship-Based Competencies, we did a great deal of background work. Yes, we went to the research literature and we took a look at what the expectations were for home visitors, we took a look at what are the things that home visitors can successfully do in partnering with families around family engagement, what are some of the family engagement outcomes as you might imagine because we here we're really focusing also on early head start and on home-based early head start programs.

So, we hope that those of you in early head start home-based programs this is your document. We certainly think it applies to home visitors across other home visiting models and we hope that we're in a the process of – we’re sharing that with a larger community. But in that context we did a lot of looking at Early Head Start home-based work in terms of research. But then we also went and we've looked at who else in our early childhood field has developed Competencies for home visitors. So, we looked at national level home-visiting Competencies across the board, some of them included some components on family engagement; some more, some less. We also took a look at all of the work out of the maternal infant early childhood home-visiting movement both for States and Tribal communities. We then looked at a number of State models. I was just talking to some folks in Pennsylvania again yesterday and we were talking about their Competencies for home visitors which again cover much more than family engagement for home visitors and a number of States have these programs.

We talked to professors who are teaching courses now o home visiting and there actually are a number of courses in universities where home visiting is the topic. We took a look at some of the move to – and what the requirements were for home visitors across programs. And then we've, in particular, looked at the home visiting models, the home visiting curricula that particularly of those of you on early head start were using and what the basis of their evidence was also; things like parents as teachers, baby talk, growing great kids so – and I’m sure there's some that we've forgotten. So, Claudia, I hope that helps answer your question and thank you for indulging me the extra time.

Cathy: So, let's move on.

Brandi: Okay, Cathy. Now, I have to say we are getting ready to look at a another example here; we totally want to do that. But I also wanted to mention something that we learned over time. That is a critical distinction, more secret behind the curtain shortcuts. One is these RBCs are for us as early childhood professionals. These are connected to our own Competencies and our professional development trajectory. However, and, I say “and,” you recognize a lot of the words in the Competencies because they come from the blue column of our PFCE Framework and those Family Engagement Outcomes. So, even here you're going to notice parent-child relationships, and for those of you know what is happening around our Framework, you'll know that the positive parent-child relationships outcome is the second of seven in that blue column of the framework. So, families, of course, Make progress toward those outcomes alongside of us. We have these Competencies that totally are connected. I feel like we need a drum roll or some kind of sound effect because that part is so exciting! We wanted to make sure you guys didn’t have to do that hard work. We wanted to do work to make those connections real because you – then a lot of incredible integrations for the Framework into systems, one, and then two, we know that you’re using other things within your program then we really wanted you to find those connections like Deidra did earlier. She said, “Hey, we use this thing, looks like this aligns pretty well. Like I see some synchronicity here.” So, just a couple of things, Cathy, I want to point out. As you show these guys this example of those secret words: knowledge, skill and practices — remember under Competency number 4. So, let me pause there.

Cathy: Sounds good. So, if we take a look at this example — we just wanted to dig a little bit more deeply — so this is Competency 4 that we just took a look at, Parent-Child Relationships and Families as Lifelong Learners. And again, this is the knowledge that the home visitor gained/has, the skills the home visitor learned and then the practices, the everyday work, the doing that the home visitor engages in. So, I want to be really clear, these are really Competencies and describe the activities for the home visitor. So, knowledge, so the home visitor understands the values of focusing on family strengths, in particular, what families already do to build strong parent-child relationships and then also the home visitor supports each family members development and learning.

So, the first is to have an understanding of what those constructs mean and what they look like. Then the next step is to communicate with families about child progress using the knowledge base from the knowledge section in ways that deepen trust and build relationships with families. So, the skill has to do with how the home visitor communicates in a way to achieve the goals under skills. And finally, when we look at what the practice looks like that home visitors use what they understand and their knowledge about communication to learn from parents through that communication exchange with that knowledge base of focusing on family strengths, learns from parents about how to recognize their child's verbal and nonverbal cues and what they may mean. So, this is just one set of the items that a series of items that are contained under the larger competency, and we wanted to give you this as an example because as you can see as you begin to dig more deeply you really begin to think about so, “How do I do this as a home visitor? What kind of knowledge do I need that's going to help me understand what it means to focus on family strengths?”

Brandi: And, you know, Cathy, I love the way this scaffold with and on each other because so many of us have, you know, been doing this work in this program option model for a good long time. So, this shows like, “Okay, do I understand like if you’re new or if you're tenured like do I need a refresher?” This allowed us to really think meaningfully about where we are in this little – these tiers. And so, if, you know, you're looking at, “Gosh, do I really create this space like I’ll learn from parents?” I’m looking at the practice. I learn from parents about how to recognize their child's verbal and non-verbal cues but gosh I could probably create more space for them to share those kinds of things. So, that's what those assessments do that I showed you a little earlier; we’ll look at those again here a little bit. But I want I get really excited to think about this model in particular and how you guys really straddle both lines of expertise with the development of the child that through and beside the relationship you build with the family. So, Cathy, I know we've got so much more to look at. I don't want to hold us up but I just really love the way these stack on each other. But I know you're picking up with number 5.

Cathy: Okay. Let's get to 5. So, Family Connections to Peers and Community. So, the home visitor works with families to strengthen their support networks, their connections whatever those may be; they may be with other parents, they may be with neighbors, they may be with other community members, they may be formal or informal. And it also involves in this context those folks who can help families with their strengths or interests and their challenges. Number 6, and you can see of these three are now building on each other and you can think of them in some ways as a group that describe we're going from, “What do I do with a home visitor? With my individual relationship with a home visitor, what are the key issues that the family may raise?” And now, we're moving to “How does a home visitor support families in connections to peer and communities?” Five, six, “How do home visitors support families’ access to community resources? How do I as a home visitor really help families’ use the community resources in order to make progress? How can they take advantage of what is available in their neighborhoods, in their communities, in their – in the larger area in which they live to be able to support their positive childhood and family outcomes?” And number 7 and by the way, this one is new in this iteration of the Competencies, Leadership and Advocacy because – and you can see as a home visitor, I’m moving from supporting family connections to peer and community to really helping families access to community. And now, I’m also supporting families and working alongside them to really help them build their strengths as advocates for themselves, for their families, for their children, for work and progress within their community, maybe the leadership in their community, leadership in their county, leadership in their state, leadership in their tribe. Again, families take us in many different amazing directions around their own capacity and demonstration of leadership and advocacy. So, as a home visitor part of my responsibility is to be able to be competent in being able to execute these three.

Cathy: With that –

Brandi: Well, Cathy, one of the things that I was thinking about for those folks who have known this before we learned a couple of lessons and, you know, we get very excited to talk about the RBCs that we started to bring these specific examples to the role within the context of reviewing the ten Competencies that you saw how Cathy did 1 through 4 then we stopped to look at an example for home visitors. Now, she did 5, 6 and 7, and we’re going to stop again and look at a real example for supervisors of home visitors. So, Cathy, look at this one.

Cathy: Okay. So, what One of the things I wanted to mention and for those of you who have been able to download the resource, what you’ll see is that the knowledge, skills and practices for home visitors are listed on the left underneath each of the large Competencies. And then right next to them are knowledge, skills and practices for home visiting supervisors. And down at the bottom of that column, on the right, there also are Competencies for leadership. So, leadership is really more than just your supervisor. But what are we expecting the people in leadership positions in our programs to be able to do to support the Competencies of the home visitors? So, let's take a look at Competency 6, Family Access to Community Resources. Yes as a home visitor, I really need to understand the resources in my community so I can support families when they have a need to reach out to one those resources and to benefit from those resources. But I also need my supervisor’s help in doing that.

So, what is my supervisor’s responsibility? I’m expecting my supervisor to understand how to help me as a home visitor to partner with families and to help me understand the nuances of matching community and program resources with the family strengths, interests, and challenges. So, I don't have to gain that understanding or learn that all by myself. I may be a good independent study, but as Brandi said before this also provides some information for me as a home visitor and for my supervisor about what kind of professional development might be helpful, what kind of community connections. So, then we go to skills, and the supervisors, with the expectation is that they're developing systems to ensure that the home visitors that they supervise know about and connect with community partners.

So, as a home visitor, that isn't my sole responsibility. My supervisor also has a responsibility to have the skills that lead to the development of those systems; supervisory practices in terms of practice; the supervisors reviews the home visitor’s practices; and linking families with community services and when their role requires it; and that they become part of the ongoing reflective supervisory practice system. So, that is the expectation of supervisors. And finally, beyond my supervisor, leadership — members of the leadership team in my organization should be able to support me as a home visitor to use community assessment program data and family feedback to form those relationships with community agencies and to improve access. So, you can see some of the parallel we call parallel process between tiers of what the expectations are in terms of Competencies of home visitors but also these are the Competencies for supervisors as well. So, we see that no one is standing alone but there is a system and a group of us together who are really supporting the execution of these Competencies. Brandi?

Brandi: Well, Cathy, I’m excited — Well you knew where my brain was going. One of the things that I’m excited about here I have expected about here is the popping out of the supervisory and leadership practices. For those of you that are, you know, engaged in any way as supervisors in the coaching model, you're going to be able to see here how there's some real important overlap. And we're excited because we know specifically, for instance, for the practice-based coaching model it's encouraged that the supervisors are not technically the coach. But I came from a very tiny Head Start program where I was the director and we wouldn't have had enough people to go around to do that. So, we know that everybody chooses different models of how that works based on your programmatic set up but we wanted to kind of give a little nod there to the supervisory and leadership practices because a lot of times coaches could lean into those for the purpose of that requirement so we don't want just to go by without you guys like, you know, having that as a little pin in the conversation. And conversation And, Cathy,I know we had the last three here ready for viewing and hearing pleasure.

Cathy: Okay. Let's do the last three. You can see these last three really, again, Are a bit different because they really talk about what you as a home visitor or as a home visiting supervisor. I will – and we make sure we include those because they're both included all the way through. These are more comprehensive system-wide or organizational-wide Competencies. The first one really has to do with the organization in which you work, and ways in which you as a home visitor provide coordinated and integrated and comprehensive services, your role to that. And again, home visitors I – at least when I was a home visitor it was a unique position because I was with both the child and the family in their home at the same time.

And so, it really gave me opportunities that people don't have as often in center-based care or – and some of those experiences are – some of them are available to us who do family advocacy work certainly but it does look different when you are going into a home every week. So, you really sometimes are the coordinator just by virtue of the fact that you are in that home with the parent and the family members and the child at the same time. But in addition, this really does mean that you work with not only families and children but with other professionals and agencies to support coordinated, integrated and comprehensive services for families. And this happens within the family, it happens within your organization and the resources you can bring to bear, it happens within the neighborhood or community and it might even spread beyond that. And it also involves, of course, other programs within that community as a whole. Number 9, Data-Driven Services and Continuous Improvement.

This is the charge for us as home visitors to always be learning through collecting information with families both by asking them what they think, how they feel what their choices are, and then also reflect with them, partner with them to really inform their goal setting, their planning and their implementation of their own experiences and actions and we want to make sure that we understand. Then the next step which is then “How does all of this information gathering affect both progress and outcome for families butalso for their children and for programs and for the entire community?” So, that's a fairly big charge but it's really about continuous learning and data-driven services. Finally, last but definitely not least, very important: Professional Growth. This competency has to do with how as a home visitor – I really demonstrate professional practice. I participate actively in opportunities around professional development and learning. And I really look at my own learning, my own lifelong learning in my professional world as a home visitor. Okay. So, that's all ten. So, Brandi it is now back to you.

Brandi: Well, Cathy, I want to – we had this chat opportunity and what we want to do is make sure you guys get the chance to see some of the pieces on professional development. So, you are welcome to let us know. Now that you've seen all ten, which ones you feel like a apply most commonly to your work and which ones you want to spend more time with? And so, think about what that looks like for you. And several of you have already mentioned that to us as a sort of we were talking through them. And finally also, if you know webinars, you know that we always hang out after the top of the hour. We do the webinar for an hour and then we stay around for at least 15 minutes after to answer any questions that are left unanswered for you or if you want to share anything for the greater good of the group.

So, we’ll be hanging out here for you and with you after the top of the hour. What I’d like to do is move us along to some of the professional development pieces. And it looks like the screen has gone away. So, I’m going to go from memory just in case so that we keep it moving because I know our hour has flown by so quickly. One of the pieces that we want to talk through next kind of connects to what I have been mentioning all along which are other key terms that are related to professional development. Coaching is a big one and we've mentioned that a couple of times because we know it’s that something that you – thanks, Nina – something that you guys are working toward that you are required to do in the home visiting model. And we wanted to make sure that we lift it up here not only for the purpose of how we do what we do within the head start construct but we know that coaching is an effective mechanism approach toward all things professional development. So, we wanted to put that right here on the very tippy top. But, Cathy, I know that you like to give us a little quick view over a couple other of these, specifically reflective practice and supervision.

Cathy: Right. But let me just mentioned them briefly. I think that we can take Coaching, Reflective Practice and Reflective Supervision and kind of put them in a big bucket, maybe it's a bucket that’s divided with three different thoughts and see these as tools that we can all use to be able to help us to cement those skills and to really practice those practices. So, they really are three different ways for us to think about what our professional practice looks like either by taking the time to think about what happened, what's happening and what should happen next we can do that with supervision, we can do that with our colleagues, we can do that with families. And then coaching, as Brandi said, is another very specific way of helping us cement skills and really turn those individual skills into everyday practices.

There are other two things on this list. Three, I think profess- organizational culture is pretty self-explanatory. But one of the professional development terms that folks have really focused on has to do with professional boundaries and just considering professional boundaries, the limit of professional responsibility and its role, what it means to develop professional relationships with families. And again, as home visitors in homes, that is often the most intimate kind of setting in which you could spend with a family; it's their home. So, when they invite you in, They’re often inviting you into their everyday life. And so, it's critically important I think in those situations to be able to understand what’s my professional role in the context of the setting of working with families, you know, how much can I do and should I do, what to my – what is the difference between personal and professional relationships. And also, here again, we're back to supervisors, how supervisors and other colleagues can help us understand and reflect and maybe even get involved in some coaching around what we know about professional boundaries. I think I'll stop there with that. And, Brandi, is there any more you want to add here?

Brandi: Well, I was thinking, Cathy, in our few minutes left, let’s work at a couple of pieces. You guys saw the resource suite, the book that's universal for all of us and then the blue book with the blue stripe on the bottom that specific to home visitors in the assessment that go with both, one for home visitors and one for their supervisors. What we’d like to do is take those words that I put a pin in earlier those knowledge, skills and practices, and see how – even with the pyramid, we have this scaffolding opportunity. So, we wanted to just quickly look at a couple of examples for the home visitors and their supervisors side by side so you can see what that looks like. So, you can see here on the left-hand side for the home visitor the knowledge piece, understands the effective ways to talk with families about their well-being, goal setting, family and child assessment, and progress. So, this part is really important because this really leans in to the part that we have there in the relationship building stages and the relationship sustainability over time. And when you look at the right-hand side, you see the supervisor’s piece, that the supervisor understands the importance of being able to support the home visitor then using the data for the ongoing both family and child assessments, the goal setting and progress and the ways to share data. So, create that open space so that not only families receive information but certainly they have the time and space to share back with us. Cathy, give us a little rundown of the skills for each one of these.

Cathy: Sure. So, here we have again skills for staff but the home visitors engaging in conversations about child assessment by asking families to share their perspectives so that’s the skill that has to do with both “How do you communicate? What do we know about child development in a content? How do I do that in a context of a home visitor?” But then the supervisors really need to work with home program leaders and home visitors to ensure that families have the information about their children and that it’s understandable and meaningful. So it’s the supervisor’s responsibility to make sure that every family gets that information in an understandable and meaningful way which really may – at least part of the way that I would interpret that and even build it into a coaching model might be that I really want to see how the supervisor is able to individualize how she or he might go about doing that with a knowledge base that becomes a skill of how do I understand the individual characteristics of this child, their strengths, possibly their challenges, how do I then make it understandable to the family, and do I have strategies to do that, and how can I work with the home visitors with whom I supervise to match that with their own styles so that they can increase their skills to engage in these conversations. So, you really have the side-by-side.
Brandi: So sorry about that, Cathy. Yes, I love the side-by-side.

Cathy: No, no. Go ahead.

Brandi: So that we can see and round out. So, we look at the knowledge, Cathy, just talked about the skills, this is the practice, and this is the concrete part for home visitors, tracking information about individual children and family progress over time to guide how we plan the individual, have them communicate with parents. Well, this is on the one-on-one sort of, you know, level but what I love about this is how as supervisors we can use the data that home visitors cultivate, some in coaching and reflective supervision, but I would humbly submit programmatic planning within the context of the five-year project period. So, those pieces I think are really exciting, so we can see how each other really create the incredible opportunity through data for not only service to and besides our family but programmatic improvement. Cathy, I know that we want to continue to stay in chat, but we are going to do that but there’s this important thing that you guys always ask about, so I don’t want you to miss it.

We take your feedback and we learn and grow from it. So, there is going to be a "thank you" email with a survey link on its way over to you, so look for a message in your inbox. We have those through your registration. And, of course, if you’re joined with other folks. A lot of you joined together, like in a conference room, you’re welcome to forward that on to your colleagues. And you can print the certificate when you complete the survey, so you can use it for your own professional development file. We know you guys track those things and really like to have the hard copy to evidence that.

One of the things that we’re going to do is hang out here for the next at least 15 minutes to answer any questions that you have left. So, I want to thank our whole NCPFCE team, our leadership at the Office of Head Start, and certainly both Cathy and Shela for helping to get out the good word about the sweet suite RBCs.
Most importantly, thanks to each of you for spending your time with us today. It's always an honor.

So, we’ll pause just for a second and then we’ll keep answering some questions for those of you that need to go right away.

Have a good one guys. Thanks for coming.

Cathy: And thank you, Brandi, as always.

Brandi: Sure.