A Foundation Training Guide for the Head Start Learning Community Engaging Parents
Developed by RMC Corporation for the Office of Head Start, Administration for Children, Youth, and Families, Department of Health and Human Services.

This Foundation Guide is the first in a series of training manuals in the area of Parent Involvement. All head start staff, regardless of their roles or responsibilities, are encouraged to develop a philosophy of successful parent involvement. Following the recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion, this Foundation Guide delineates three action steps: 1) Reviewing and expanding current resources used for family services, parent education, and family support; 2) increasing efforts to involve parents in all aspects of the Head Start program; and 3) a greater emphasis on the role of fathers in Head Start. Subsequent guides in this series include: 1) Communicating with Parents, 2) Partners in Decision Making, 3) Designing Parenting Education Programs, 4) Supporting Family Learning Environments, and 5) Building a Successful Future.

The contents of the three training modules are as follows:

Module 1 - Defining Parent Involvement
This module explores the definition of parent involvement in the broad context of daily interactions. Participants identify how current program practices support the new vision of parent involvement set forth by the Advisory Committee.

Module 2 - Individualizing Parent Involvement
Participants identify practices and behaviors that support parent participation and create an atmosphere of belonging. The diverse needs of families and the accessibility of current program practices are analyzed.

Module 3 - Sharing Responsibility for Parent Involvement
Every member of the Head Start staff has a role in supporting parent involvement. This module uses team-building strategies to help staff members create a comprehensive, flexible plan for reaching out to all of the parents in the program.

In addition to the training modules, this Foundation Guide offers suggestions for further professional development such as course work at community education programs, working collaboratively with other agencies, and peer support groups. The resource section provides additional Head Start materials, other publications, and organizations that may be useful in the effort to engage families in Head Start programming.

Available from:
Head Start programs can order this Foundation Guide from the Head Start Publication Management Center by faxing a request to (703) 683-5769.

Empowerment and Family Support (1989-1982)
Mon Cochran, Editor Cornell Cooperative Extension

This collection of the bulletin series Empowerment & Family Support, published between 1989 and 1992, consists of articles written as part of a research, program development, and dissemination project funded by the Ford Foundation and conducted by the editor, Mon Cochran. These publications focus on changes experienced by parents of three-year-olds who participated in a program consisting of home visits and parent support groups provided over a two and a half year period. As a result of participating in the program, parents felt better about themselves and more confident about their abilities to relate to their children and to act on their children’s behalf. Their growing sense of self-esteem enabled participants to expand their social networks and become better able to respond to school-related difficulties experienced by their children.

The program’s success led to the establishment of the Cornell Empowerment Group, which expanded the initial program and developed additional training applications. The bulletin served as a forum for exchanging ideas and practices related to family empowerment. Each issue is reprinted in its original form.

The first issue contains an in-depth presentation of the meaning of empowerment through family support, and introduces the implications of an empowerment orientation for child care and the role of human services professionals.

The second issue focuses on the practice of family empowerment and features interviews with Maria Chavez, founder of the Early Childhood and Family Education Program in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The third issue centers on how women think about power, empowerment, and their roles. It consists of nine interviews with activists working in different countries at the grassroots level. Topics addressed in the interviews include self-definition, the contemporary political process, access to economic resources, and interest in the well-being of children and families.

The fourth issue examines the application of the program’s concepts to practice. It explores the connections between child care and the empowerment process through a collection of articles featuring community development approaches in Kenya, Nicaragua, France, Finland, aboriginal Canada, and the United States.

The fifth issue addresses the interaction between empowerment and evaluation. Articles draw on specific examples to emphasize the importance of participatory evaluation as a means of positive reinforcement for program efforts.

Finally, the sixth issue is concerned with how professional family workers come to understand, support, and embrace the concept of helping through family empowerment and provides a list of skills necessary to facilitate programs in which participants develop the ability to work toward self-determined goals. The issue concludes with an in-depth analysis of the Minnesota Early Learning Design, a peer-oriented parent education program.

Available from:
Cornell University Extension

New Expectations: Community Strategies for Responsible Fatherhood.
(1995) - James A. Levine with Edward Pitt

Developed by The Fatherhood Project, a national research and education program devoted to examining and supporting men’s involvement in child-rearing, this book offers new ways of thinking about the role of fathers and provides a detailed strategy for groups working to create and improve support systems for fathers. The authors begin with an extensive analysis of existing data regarding the effects of fathers’ involvement with their children (or lack thereof). Instead of making legal, moral, or economic arguments about men's role in rearing their children, the authors focus on what steps institutions can begin to take immediately to support fathers taking responsibility for their children.

In addition to a rich discussion of the social meaning and context of fatherhood, the authors provide detailed profiles of a diverse set of community-based programs that are successfully working with fathers and families. Finally, this book provides an annotated list of relevant publications as well as a list of nearly 300 programs and organizations throughout the United States that are working to involve fathers in the lives of their children.

Available from:
Families and Work Institute
330 Seventh Avenue
New York, NY 10001

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