Parent Involvement and Leadership

Parent Leadership Project

Strengthening Families Through Parent Involvement

Research tell us that one of the best ways to prevent child abuse and neglect is to educate, inform, support and partner with parents to help them build strong and healthy families.

Through training and ongoing support, the ICTF Parent Involvement Project hopes to promote the empowerment of parents for leadership at multiple levels with the Protective Factors for Strengthening Families flowing through all gatherings.

While doing initial meetings with agencies in the Treasure Valley, a parent leader was identified at Open Arms Baby Boutique in Nampa, Idaho. ICTF provided a 7-hour training for parents and providers on parent leadership and group facilitation. After receiving the facilitator training, this parent leader immediately began facilitating a Circle of Parents group at the Boutique. ICTF provides ongoing mentorship and training for this parent leader. Currently, Bi-monthly meetings are held in both English and Spanish.

The ICTF has again partnered with the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children and the Strengthening Families through Early Care and Education providers by offering training and assistance to programs in the development of the parent involvement component in the Strengthening Families curriculum. This valuable addition to the curriculum will connect the parents to the Protective Factor framework offering them an opportunity to discuss the value of each factor in raising a healthy, strong family. This effort is beginning to change the paradigm in Idaho from child care as child centered care to include family centered care. As we move forward into this work, we continue to engage more parents in leadership roles with their childcare centers. A parent leadership training grant was established for centers who wanted to improve parent involvement and leadership in their programs. In April, five programs participated in a two-day parent leadership development training and have all submitted their program improvement plans in this area. Included in these plans will be a six week community cafe' at each site.

Further, all programs funded by the Idaho Children's Trust Fund are required to involve parents and participants in the planning, implementation, leadership and/or evaluation of their program. Various grantees have parents involved in all areas of their programs. Parents have conducted new outreach activities to Spanish speaking populations by providing information at community soccer tournaments in one rural community. Parents have filled in when staff members have been out on medical leave, have volunteered at incentive based programs, and have staffed thrift shops.

Conferees: “Everyone has a place at the table”

“It’s never enough just to tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into peoples’ heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.” John Seely Brown, quoted in The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations That Matter

At our Strengthening Families Training Institute in March, the over 150 people gathered engaged in a community café to talk about the future of child abuse prevention work in Idaho. The café process is a way of creating intentional but natural conversations that encourage people to put their best ideas into the group in this case to provide a shared vision of the future.

Each small group discussed three questions culminating in the final question: What will Idaho’s social movement to strengthen families and prevent child abuse look like?

This question generated much discussion with the following conclusions about how we can build the interconnections necessary to create a shift in the society.

• Agencies working together—advocating as one
• Policy change
• Step forward as a neighbor and community to be a part of a child’s life
• Be the connector
• Everyone has a place at the table
• Barriers being broken down
• Use of the language of possibilities
• A well defined, early childhood professional work force that provides quality practices for kids and families
• All child care staff/programs are trained in Strengthening Families Curriculum
• Universal pre-K that is modeled after Head Start
• Nurturing, happy childhoods
• Coming together from all backgrounds for one purpose
• Protective factors built into every family
• Patient Impatience
• A big, extended family dinner
• Community coming together
• Neighborhoods have the resources and support that they need
• Strength based practices with families

Some of these address how we need to be together. Others are proposals for programs to build and implement.

Changing the Lives of Children: One Conversation at a Time

“I ask you to imagine that we do have the power to make a difference through fostering conversation, community, and committed action in our lives and work. I deeply believe that when we help to change the collective conversation about a situation, we have the opportunity to influence the future of that situation, whatever it may be and at whatever level of scale it occurs.”

—From Juanita Brown, author and developer of the World Café process

Robin Higa of the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds, took this idea from the World Café and adapted it to the world of parent leadership through the creation of what she calls Community Cafés. Robin has been developing this process through work she is doing in Thurston County, Washington (Olympia) and with groups throughout the country.

On Saturday, November 22nd, the Idaho Children’s Trust Fund in collaboration with FRIENDS National Resource Center and the National Alliance of Children’s Trust and Prevention Funds, were able to offer a free one-day training in Community Café’s presented by Robin Higa.

Higa and co-facilitator, Steve Byers, treated the 25 participants, who traveled from as far away as Twin Falls, Pocatello, Buhl and Burley to an approach that sparks leadership and builds partnerships to strengthen families. The Community Café Host Orientation provided the opportunity to experience a Café first hand. It also helped to increase knowledge about the protective factors necessary for children to thrive and how to build them with families. The training emphasized the importance of parent leadership and real partnerships between parents and programs.

Intentional conversation was the topic and the method for the day’s interactive presentation for parent and program representatives from early childhood centers, schools, faith-based organizations, service programs, local business, neighborhood centers and social service systems. Seeds of conversation were planted and harvested in both small and large group discussions with a variety of documentation strategies. Participants learned how to successfully plan and implement community café’s, conversation design, monitoring and evaluation and left prepared to host cafés themselves with an 83 page Host Orientation Toolkit in hand and the experiences of the day in heart.

As part of our Strengthening Families Training Institute, ICTF hosted a Community Cafe' for all Institute participants. Discussions centered on the common goals of our programs for social movement and change. For a complete harvest of the SFTI Cafe', please visit the Cafe' link.