Evidence Based
Parents as Teachers
Parents as Teachers builds strong communities, thriving families and children who are healthy, safe and ready to learn by matching parents and caregivers with trained professionals who make regular personal home visits during a child’s earliest years in life, from prenatal through kindergarten. Grounded in the latest research, Parents as Teachers develops curricula that support a parent’s role in promoting school readiness and healthy development of children. Our approach is intimate and relationship-based. We embrace learning experiences that are relevant and customized for the individual needs of each family and child. As a result, individuals and organizations who use our curricula benefit from our understanding of the evolving needs of today’s families and children.
NFSN Standards
The nationally-adopted Standards of Quality for Family Strengthening & Support are designed as a tool for planning, providing, and assessing quality services. Through implementation of these standards, families are supported and strengthened through quality practice. The Standards create common language and expectations in the Family Support and Strengthening field across different kinds of programs, such as Family Resource Centers, home visiting programs, and child development programs.
The Standards address 5 areas of practice important for any Program or individual working with families through 17 standards, each with Foundational and High Quality Indicators and implementation examples:
FAMILY CENTEREDNESS Working with a family-centered approach that values families and recognizes them as integral to the Program.
FAMILY STRENGTHENING Utilizing a family strengthening approach to support families to be strong, healthy, and safe, thereby promoting their success and optimal development.
DIVERSITY, EQUITY, AND INCLUSION Valuing, respecting, and embracing families’ diversity, and advancing equity and inclusion.
COMMUNITY STRENGTHENING Developing a strong and healthy community by working collaboratively with various stakeholders and supporting families’ civic engagement, leadership development, and ability to affect systems change.
EVALUATION Looking at areas of Program strength, as well as areas for further development, in order to guide continuous quality improvement and achieve positive results for families.
nationalfamilysupportnetwork.org
Ages and Stages Questionnaire
The Ages and Stages Questionnaire is a developmental screening tool for children between birth and age 6. This tool uses a parent-centric approach that draws upon parents’ knowledge of their child to celebrate developmental milestones, and identify developmental progress and potential delays in young children during the critical years of development before they start school. This screener supports families in developing meaningful next steps in learning, intervention and/or monitoring their child to greater the chance a child has to reach his or her potential.
Sparkler
Sparkler helps families know how their children are developing — through observation of age-based play activities and through the leading child development screen. After each play activity, parents make in-app observations. Those observations help establish patterns in the child’s play, and are the foundation of coaching from early childhood experts. Sparkler is proud to offer the Ages & Stages Questionnaires® (ASQ®), which assess wellness in five developmental areas — communication, fine motor, gross motor, personal-social, and problem solving.
Adult Education for Parents/Legal Guardians
Offers a range of adult educational opportunities to parents or legal guardians. Parenting classes that teach child-rearing skills, child development, positive discipline, in a respectful and positive manner to parents of various backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, languages, while promoting diversity and inclusiveness. Parent Workshops enhance parent-child interactions and ESL English as a Second Language classes help parents learn English to help advocate for their children and families. Parent Education may include but not limited to the following educational opportunities on topics such as; Health and Nutrition, Literacy, After School and summer programs, Social Media Awareness, Bullying, Father Initiatives, Opening Doors/Abriendo Puertas, and more.