TIPS FOR ENGAGING PARENTS
- Ask how they would like to contribute.
- When parents volunteer to help, make sure they are involved in something worthwhile.
- Solicit parents' involvement in events.
- Involve parents in sharing leadership when appropriate.
- Keep parents informed and help them understand objectives.
- Provide networking programs to share information and resources
- Elicit parent feedback.
- Invite parents to meetings and hold a special meeting or retreat for parents where youth present the program.
- Develop a short survey or provide a suggestion box for families who may not want to discuss an issue in person, but would like to communicate a concern or compliment.
- Provide written policies that promote family involvement
BARRIERS TO PARENT PARTICIPATION
- not enough time (especially during the day)
- feel they have nothing to contribute
- don’t understand the planning process or the service system
- don’t know how to become involved in a meaningful way
- lack of child care
- feel intimidated
- not available during the time activities are scheduled
- language and cultural differences
- lack of transportation
- don’t feel welcome at the organization/program
SOURCES: An Affirmative Approach to Parental Involvement in Youth Programs Parent Professional Collaboration Become familiar with the interests and talents of parents.
Helpful Resources for YD Professionals
An Affirmative Approach to Parental Involvement in Youth Programs by Alayne Torretta, Laura Bovitz
This article demonstrates how adults showing parent-oriented behavior can be motivated to shift to child-oriented behavior within the boundaries of the program.
Parents and Teachers Working Together
Strategies to establish and maintain a good working relationship with students' parents.
Family Skills Training for Parents and Children
The Strengthening Families Program has developed into a family-change program that has served the needs of culturally and geographically diverse families and their children across the Nation. Several examples of such varied adaptations of the program's strategy are described in these pages. Suggestions for implementing the program in communities are also provided, as are additional resources that should prove useful.
Parent Child Connectedness
Lori A. Rolleri; Steve Bean; Julie Taylor
Helps to describe the many ways that parents matter in improving their teen children’s odds for success. It provides a comprehensive review of the research literature, plus offers some practical insights about how and why "promising approaches work." Most importantly, it provides a contemporary framework for talking about parents and children. This document is written to help program operators, policymakers, funders and researchers reflect upon what works and begin to think creatively about what else needs to be done to ensure that all parents have what they want and what they need to form powerful, positive and productive connections with their children.
Parent Child Connectedness: Voices of African American and Latino Parents and Teens
Steve Bean, MAT; Lori A. Rolleri, MSW, MPH
This document is an important step forward in the fields of youth development and adolescent health. It makes a clear and compelling case that parents really do care about the quality of relationships with their children. It also makes the case that parents want help and look to community partners for assistance. Most importantly, this focus group report captures parents' ideas about what practitioners can do to help them figure out why teens do what they do.
Research FACTs and Findings: Parent Child Relations
Loren Frankel and Steve Hamilton
Parent-child conflict increases as children move into adolescence. Although this trend is not inevitable, it is common and can be quite distressing for parents and adolescents.