Professional and Parent Roles

Family engagement is an interactive process through which program staff and families, family members and their children build positive and goal-oriented relationships. It is a shared responsibility of families and professionals that requires mutual respect for the roles and strengths each has to offer. Family engagement means doing with - not doing to or for - families. At the program level, family engagement involves parents’ engagement with their children and with staff as they work together toward the goals that families choose for themselves and their children. It also involves families and staff working together toward goals to improve the program.

Professionals

ERSEA

ERSEA helps to prepare your application for our Head Start program. They keep track of the attendance for our classrooms as well as our partners to help the program guarantee the funding it needs.

Family Support Specialists

Family Support Specialists’ job is meeting with families once a month to both create goals together (financial, educational, etc.) and help achieve them. They work with parents and guardians to find additional outside resources and can help make referrals, providing extra support in helping our children grow.

Health Specialists

Health Specialist ensures the tracking of your child’s health care information. They visit classrooms to perform vision and hearing screenings as well as providing assistance with health issues which may arise in child care centers.

Mental Health & Disability Specialists

Mental Health & Disability Specialists provide a number of screenings for your child to evaluate and identify any needs related to social, emotional, behavioral, or cognitive development. Should there be a concern our staff will help facilitate the next steps and referrals needed. These qualified staff are also available in our sites to visit classrooms regularly and assist with any challenges that present on a class to class basis.

DART—Early Intervention and Pittsburgh Public Schools Early Intervention

DART—Early Intervention and Pittsburgh Public Schools Early Intervention assists our program with those children who require additional support for specific needs. Their staff provides support services in our classrooms in areas of social/emotional development, physical development, cognitive development and language development. These one on one services are provided via our partnership with the AIU. A complete parent handbook of their services can be viewed under our parent resources tab.

Family Participation

Parent(s) will:

• Participate in center parent meetings.

• Be available for parent conferences.

• Be available for home visits by the childcare teachers and family advocates.

• Provide paperwork such as well child physicals, dental exams and follow up on referrals.

• Participate in center level activities throughout the year.

• Maintain child’s attendance and provide documentation for absences.