Workshops/How To Work With Families

• Child Focus
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• Foster Parent Training - Options For Youth
• Inclusion in Schools: Real and Perceived Views of Full Inclusion - Dark Ages? Bright Futures
• Infants and Toddlers in Your Care: How to Nurture 0-3 Year-Olds in Group Care and at Home
• Learning and Teaching Styles
• Preparing Personnel to Work With Parents and Families
• Reducing Stress in the Lives of Young Chlldren
• Sample Forms for Teachers
• Ask Dr. Susan

Collaborative Consultative Skills for Parents and Professionals

 

Job and Family Services - Foster Family Training

The ABC’s of Positive Parenting for Foster Parents

Parents and paraprofessionals who work with infants and children under three years of age are more and more recognizing that, as demanding consumers, families must advocate as resourceful adults for their children and grandchildren.  Wouldn’t you, as a practically perfect parent, like to have a good working relationship with social workers, child life workers, early childhood teachers or other “pros”? 

 

Wouldn’t it be comfortable to make a call and ask how you might access different learning information, special products and materials and just plain take advantage of the services and support you know you need?  But what really happens?  Families tell horror stories of principals who refuse to sit and talk to them about their needs and concerns, their issues and priorities?  They are attacked at meetings at which thirteen or more professionals have reports and edicts they deliver, without asking for any of your opinions. 

 

Fathers fight with mothers about what good it does to try to work with teachers or the schools.  Grandparents fight with social workers that deny them financial help, as guardians, because there is no time to make visits or file reports.  Few parents are aware where in the community to go for help.  Do you want to make things better for children or do you just want to have monthly pity parties at the meetings you attend or the places where your sons and daughters spend their days?   This collaborative consultative design has been successful for elementary school programs (Thousand, Villa, Whitcomb & Nevin, 1996.)  Early education of handicapped children programs and early intervention programs have also used the model successfully in both home and classroom settings (Turben, 1997.)

Six collaborative consultative skills constitute the body of training.  Parent and professional co-trainers teach one collaborative consultative skill at each session:

1. Cooperation
2. Consultative-time sharing
3. Conversational instruction
4. Shared expertise
5. Self-evaluation
6. Collaborative brainstorming.

 

Diverse staff backgrounds and varied levels of experience present a significant challenge to Head Start administrators, regional trainers, specialists and professionals and paraprofessionals, who are responsible for the training of personnel.  Generally, staff members consider most training workshops chores, perhaps because training is generally designed by content area, rather than skills directly related to an individual's skills and strengths.

 

An activity-based "collaborative consultation" model, skill-based and family centered, appeals to parents as well as staff because the training answers the question, "What do I get out of it?"  They receive resource information they can use in their jobs, and they receive practice in performing six practical skills they are able to reinforce every day.  These skills promote self-development, group cooperation and inclusiveness.