Lesson 2Our Perspective: Family Connections IECMHC Model

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So in order to do this, one of the things that we've developed, I'm part of the National Center on Parent-Family Community Engagement for the Office for Head Start and the Office of Child Care. And we've developed kind of a way of describing strategies for engaging families. I suspect that these are all not new to you, that these are the kinds of strategies that you use. To share this list because we found that it's really been helpful to use this list of basic strategies for engaging families with staff.

So I offer them to you as one way of thinking about talking about engaging families with staff and particularly now that there are going to be remote exchanges with family and with staff, these are the kinds of things that may be helpful to think about again. And I want to comment on a couple of them. I know when I came across this list and then had the privilege of working to refine it, I kept thinking, oh, I know how to do that, having been a mental health consultant both in health care and in early care.

It's been more than 35 years now. My thought was, well, I know about these things, hadn't thought about organizing them in this way, so I'm hoping that the organization will help you. This is really a set of strategies that really have to do with the way that we think about families. That our work with families is always around supporting parental and family competence. It really is the strength-based approach that we bring as mental health consultants.

And to do that many times is not that difficult. However, when I think we're working with families, we're walking alongside parents in situations that are stressful, in situations that are difficult, and I think of our current time, that this is when supporting parental competence is going to be of critical importance. Value a family's passion. And when I first saw that, I asked my colleagues who talked about this, and actually this is something that I learned from Dr.

Brazelton, who was my mentor here at the center. And he said, you know, value passion where you find it. Passion may be anger. It may be expressed that way. It may be expressed as sadness. It may be expressed as frustration. And I can see that thinking about the days ahead, We may hear from families how angry they are, how frustrated they are, how frightened they are. And instead of reacting, oh, my gosh, this is a negative expression.

What do I do with it? Or how do I think about it? Or how do I support staff to think about it? I've really learned that the first step is to value that passion, which is something that we've all learned to do as mental health professionals. But it's an interesting way of thinking. About it. Reflect on the family's perspective first. Focus on the parent-child relationship. Engage in shared decision making.

Oftentimes we can be seen as the experts, and yet if we always remember, families are their experts around their own families and their own children. And the same for the staff with whom we partner. We talked about strength-based attitudes, and then the last two I wanted to mention, because this was really something that was helpful for me to really identify, which was that if I am really not connecting with a family, if I'm really struggling or if this is a family where I think that they may really be struggling, that if I can step back, take a deep breath, observe the child's behavior and or observe the family's behavior, find something positive and without a judgment, without a compliment or a criticism.

Just observe that behavior, the behavior of that child. Look how your daughter really is holding on to you. Look at how she looks at you. No judgment. Sometimes that can really open a door. Again, I'm sure you all know these, and this is probably the most basics I'm going to be during all this presentation, have these because I think they can be really helpful to share with staff.

This transcript was made from the recording by software. It may have small errors.

In the context of thinking about opportunity to support mastery for staff and working with families, I think there are a number of things that it sounds like you're all doing. And I would really love to ask you to use the chat again to really let me know what kinds of things you do. Let's go to the next slide. I have a list of some of the things that I've done and my colleagues have told me.

Assuming that a number of you plan and offer professional development for staff around working with families, just let me know if that's something that you do regularly. Are you able to do that? And I also have some resources where if you're looking for other staff professional development opportunities, I'm going to talk a little bit about those as well. There are times when you are invited or maybe regular members of a staff management team and staff meetings.

And I would encourage you to not only be involved in those meetings when there's conversation about a family that may be struggling or difficult or a child that may be struggling or difficult, but also to be in those meetings where there are discussions about entire classrooms. Oftentimes the preventive work that you can do is really much more powerful around that classroom work. Providing reflective practice and our coaching for staff around working with families, accompanying them when there is a conference with a parent, whether it be about the child or about another issue that's related to the child or related to the parent.

And family issues to really be available to accompany staff or directors, for example, in this work. Observing and interacting in classrooms is something that we do as mental health consultants very often. I'd ask you to think about every time you do that, how can you take the information that you learn about the child in the classroom back to the parent or to the parents? Have a conversation about what it's like for you to work in the classroom with the parents?

Can you have a conversation around some of the things that are going on in the classroom and some of the ways that teachers may be working with your children around social emotional issues? I think of one example in the Family Connections Mental Health Consultation model, we have a whole series of social skill building activities for children in the classroom. And so oftentimes, the mental health consultant, along with the teacher, will share what happened in some of those skill building activities with the children during the day, as well as providing individual information to parents about their children.

Another really important issue around classroom observations has to do with the kind of cultural or ethnic kind of special practices or information around particular holidays that may resonate with certain families. And these practices may be unique to the family. They may be observations of given groups of people. But really important to show families, both have them participate in putting that information together to share. With all the children in the classrooms to participate in the classroom if they can, but also to share that with them.

So finding and providing assessment information around families as well as children. I think that our programs do a really good job of doing child assessments, but sometimes thinking about assessments for family members of is screening. I know that there are a number of programs, for example, that screen for maternal depression with very young children and families and some that have begun to do that. There are other programs that really screen all families around basic needs to determine what kind of needs there might be, and some help with thinking about how you might do that in a sensitive way.

And then the last one here is intervening therapeutically with children. Now, we're not doing therapy, but we really keenly use the word therapeutic intervention when talking about mental health consultation, both with children and with families. And some of that may happen in the classroom. It may happen with office visits. It may happen with program level work. Next slide.