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Parent Education Committee Update

The Parent Education Committee met on January 11, 2000. Fourteen committee members from across the state continued discussions on parent education. A summary of the committee meeting may be found below.

Current Understandings

• There are many types of parent education programs across the state, with a myriad of funding sources.
• No one program will meet the diverse needs of Alabama parents, therefore a multi-faceted approach should be developed.
• Since child care teachers have regular, ongoing contact with parents, training these teachers on how to interact with parents is crucial.
• Parents receive parenting advice and support from many different. sources, such as, physicians, television and books, and their own parents. Ways to help others to help parents must be tailored differently for each group.
• Initially, we should focus our efforts on parents with children from birth through five.

Mission of this task force:

To inform parents about the importance of quality child care and its effects on children.

Action Steps:

• Identify offices, agencies, and bureaus with a parent involvement component and make this information accessible to others via the internet.
• Gather current information being disseminated from across the state about selecting quality child-care, analyze for consistency, create a succinct brochure that is parent friendly, attractive, and easy to understand.
• Place Choosing Quality Child Care brochures in places parents frequent: grocery stores, libraries, pediatricians’ offices, high school counselors’ offices, Child Care Management Agencies, real estate offices, hospitals, etc.
• Gather information about specific parent involvement programs. Create a database with specific information about programs.
• Promote and integrate the mission of Parent Education Initiative with other Consortium initiatives

For questions or more information regarding this initiative, contact Delyne Hicks at (205) 934-3802, dhicks@civmail.circ.uab.edu

Initial Committee Report and Activities Overview 12/99

Parent education is consistently identified as an essential component of quality child care. Although the concept of parent education is broad, this advisory committee discussed parent education in terms of:

• Parents as child care consumers – parents need to know how to recognize and insist upon high quality child care, and
• Parents as partners with child care professionals - needing to know the importance of continuity between settings for children and child development.

There are parent education efforts underway all over the state, for example, ‘Winning Teams’, ‘Parents as Teachers’ and programs to get fathers more involved with their children. However, the efforts are fragmented. The state could benefit from sharing ideas and information statewide.

• There is a need for an easy, objective, measuring instrument that parents can use to identify quality and compare child care settings.
• It is difficult to get parents involved/how do we reach them?
• Everyone in the community (not just parents of young children) needs to have access to good information about child care quality and its importance
• We may need to change the language we use – terms such as ‘parent education’ and the idea of teaching parenting skills – sound judgmental and condescending.
• We don’t know everything that is going on in the state – there is a need for a clearinghouse of information.
• Needs to be interagency/organization collaboration.
• The idea of providing, for children, consistency between settings (day and night care) needs to be addressed with providers and parents.
• Need to reframe child care as care and education and stretch parental involvement back to preschool years.
• See continuity from birth through secondary education and beyond.

• Develop a standardized measurement tool that parents can use statewide – this could not only help parents choose quality child care – but raise the awareness of providers and the public as to the components and importance of quality.
• Make child care information more accessible – have brochures in stores, packets for new parents, ‘welcome kits’, to raise awareness of the importance of quality.
• Use terminology such as, ‘strengthening families’ and focus on helping and partnering with parents rather than ‘educating’ them.
• Establish database of all existing programs and what we know about parent education.
• Collaborate to prevent duplication, reinventing the wheel and to share good programs around the state.