Family Engagement: Engaging Parents during COVID...

Program Management & Design Division

Core Course: 80-201

Course Name:Family Engagement: Engaging Parents during COVID

Outline: click here to view

Course Descriptions: The Family Engagement – Engaging Parents during COVID-19 course is to promote family strengthening and prevention strategies via virtual, electronic, telephonic means during COVID-19. With many programs living under some type of stay-at-home order and many states closing schools for the fall, programs must find unique ways to support vulnerable families. The idea of parents as children’s first and most important teachers is central to Head Start’s philosophy of working with families. This course will present strategies and best practices to: develop and manage a web-based service plan, identify and connect your plans to your mission, choose the best sites and times to capture your families and objectives, consider such issues as technical requirements, promotion and quality assurance, create strength-based, use plain language writing and culturally and linguistically responses, response to comments and questions to families virtually through web-based services. If you want to engage parents through meaningful content and services, this course will help understand and utilize virtual tools to support parents though social media, chat groups and other web-based services.

Who should attend - This course has particular relevance for staff making home visits and for teaching staff concerned with building bridges between the families learning environment and online services.  Program Managers, who are responsible for staff-development activities will also benefit from this course.  All Head Start staff, regardless of their roles or responsibilities, need to understand the information and demonstrate the skills presented in this course. Managers will find the course useful in planning and implementing parent engagement programs. Staff with the major responsibility for engaging parents can use this course to analyze the effectiveness of current online practices. Policy council members can use this course to engage staff and parents in a dialogue to create a profile of the program’s parent engagement activities. Staff will gain a fresh perspective on what virtual engagement means. Staff who informally relate to families as they carry out their daily work can discover how each of virtual interactions with parents contribute to their engagement with the program.

Upon successful completion of all program requirements, graduates will be able to:

1.	Provide opportunities to increase parents’ observation skills and share assessments with through online learning portals
2.	Share with parents staff online education activities for children and discuss with parents their child’s behavior and development
3.	Discuss with parents how to create and sustain safe, supportive online environments in the home
4.	Individualize family partnership agreements presented through online web-conferencing that can virtually describe family goals, responsibilities, timetables and strategies for achieving goals (especially related to family literacy) as well as progress in achieving them
5.	Provide online engagement and education activities that are responsive to the ongoing and expressed needs of parents themselves
6.	Provide online opportunities for parents to enhance their parenting skills, their knowledge and understanding of the educational and developmental needs of their children and share concerns about their children through soft contact methods
7.	Provide, either directly or through referrals to other agencies, opportunities for children and families to participate in online family literacy services by increasing family access to web-based materials, services and activities essential to family literacy development
8.	Assist parents as online learners to recognize and address their own literacy goals
9.	Conduct staff-parent conferences