Serving Adults with Special Learning Needs

Meeting the Family

A home visit can set the stage for a working partnership between a family and a teacher, home and school, intergenerational learning and a family literacy program. “Home visiting is a strategy for offering information, guidance, and emotional and practical support directly to families in their home,” as defined by Zero to Three (1999). Meeting the family can build a bridge of goodwill to educational programs.

Six principles of the family support philosophy outlined by Dunst, Trivette, and Deal in 1994 are: “(1) enhancement of a sense of community, (2) mobilization of resources and support, (3) shared responsibility and collaboration, (4) protection of family literacy, (5) strengthening of family functioning, and (6) proactive practices in human services” (Hanson, 2004, p. 56). These principles were articulated after family social support developed as a way to help families in need of assistance or families of children with disabilities (Hanson, 2004).

The family-centered intervention strategies developed from the principles are to: (a) focus on positive family functioning by looking at their needs, goals, and current lives, (b) meet the family’s needs by identifying strengths and abilities while locating necessary resources, (c) to see that the family receives the resources and the social assistance essential to support their needs, and lastly, (d) to promote family self-sufficiency by providing assistance in a way which allows for a family to recognize their inherit competencies (Hanson, 2004).

Throughout history the poor and sick have benefited from home visits. The family-centered support configuration of today is recent. Developmental theorist, Bronfenbrenner, asserted that “active parent involvement was a major contributor to the success” of early education programs in 1975 (Hanson, 2004, p. 186; Wasik, 2001). Another psychologist, Nicholas Hobbs wrote in 1975’s The Future of Children of the “role of intervention programs was to marshal socializing agents within the family and their functioning” (Hanson, 2004, p. 186). The Even Start Family Literacy program was first authorized in 1988.

The objectives of Even Start are to improve parent literacy, assist parents in becoming partners in their child’s education, and to provide assistance to help children reach their learning potential. The Kenan model for family literacy, used in Even Start programs, has four components: early childhood education, interactive literacy activities, parenting, and adult education for the family.

Home-centered instruction is an effective tool to meet families “where they live” (Zero to Three, 1999, p. 1). Much can be learned in a home visit by the educator looking for the best way to reach a family with supportive information. The one-on-one opportunity to assist a parent and a child with information can be an optimal situation. And an age-appropriate activity for the child teaches not only the child, but adds to family goodwill and illustrates to the family how and why activities with children are important. The essence of the network of supports is the “complementary learning” concept put forth by the Harvard Family Research Project (2005). The child and family become school-ready and citizen-ready. Information gathered can assist in planning for the whole family literacy program (Olsen, 2003).

A few issues in implementing home visiting in a family literacy program include both its expense, and the need for parent educators to have a clearer understanding of their objectives. That means having a specific and consistent definition of objectives and the means by which success will be measured. The following questions need careful consideration:

1. How will we know that this family gained parenting skills while participating in home-based instruction?
2. To what degree did this gain occur?
3. How can we use the results of home-based instruction to improve the program for future participants?, and
4. How will we know if the monetary investment in home-based instruction yields the desired result?

Detailed records of home-based instruction are necessary in order to respond to the accountability questions. Pre- and post tests are available with the Parenting Education Profile (PEP) and Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME). While the instructional time can be completely formulated to meet the needs of an individual family, home visits usually involve one family at a time, with associated travel costs. Funding entities expect programs to have a plan for answering such questions before awarding funds to the project.

A successful lesson is one that meets the parents where they are. Regardless of their background, parents have unique strengths. These strengths can be used as a foundation for growth in parenting education. Even parents with advanced education may have very little knowledge about child development. These parents may expect a parent educator to verbalize the research and reasons behind the concepts, or may have inappropriately high developmental expectations for their young children. Parents with only a few years of formal education and are new to this country may not have knowledge about child development or know about free public school, mandatory school attendance laws, public libraries, or the Internet. For these parents, knowledge of the American way of life is as important as learning to be their child’s first teacher. Baseline information becomes necessary for developing an appropriate lesson plan. In addition to information about the parent’s knowledge of child development, developmental screenings of the child, observations of the home environment, observations of parent-child interactions, and a family history go into the baseline data.

Parent educators are expected to include documentation, assessment, and purposeful instruction in the extremely limited time available for home-based instruction. The process also includes reviewing recent visit records, using a research-based curriculum, knowledge of community resources, and building a library of learning materials. “Schools, Families, and Social and Emotional Learning: Ideas and Tools for Working with Parents and Families” is a starting point of information for parents (CASEL, 2005). Ways home visitors can be successful are by being nonjudgmental, empathetic, persistent, bilingual, reaching all generations, culturally sensitive, mentoring and using role-playing, assisting the family with reading documents, and scheduling or preparing questions for other professionals (Klass, 2003). Preparation and organization are critical to create home visit lessons that are appropriate and relevant for the family.

A parent educator may arrive at the home visit prepared for a lesson only to find a family in crisis. Family, parent, and/or child needs prevail before a lesson plan. Safety of children takes precedence over anything else. NAEYC’s Code of Ethical Conduct for early childhood educators states, “Above all, we shall not harm children” (NAEYC, 2005). This code may be accessed by organizations needing to establish a set of procedures for educators, in addition to steps from state regulations and guidelines in the reporting of activities that endanger family members to the proper authorities. Wasik’s Home Visiting: Procedures for Helping Families is a resource for ethical and professional issues. Procedures aside, safety and family crisis needs must be resolved before the parent will be able to continue with any new learning.

Confidentiality, honesty, listening actively, and communicating clearly and respectively are cornerstones to working with families (Hanson, 2004; Wasik, 2001). In home-centered instruction, the elements of the expectations, the agenda, the roles, and the issues raised by being in the home need to be addressed (Klass, 2003). Home visits advance through the phases of getting acquainted, exploration, collaboration, and closure (Hanson, 2004). Boundary issues are significant for home visitors and, therefore, professional development should be ongoing for home visitors (Klass, 2003).

There were 30,405 home visits in Texas Even Start programs for the 2005-06 year. The goal is three home visits per family, per quarter. To attain a perfect three home visits ratio, every family would have to be active for every day of the quarter. There is no guarantee that every family will stay the full quarter. A ratio between two and three home visits is more realistic. The 2005-06 year has an average of 2.06 home visits per family, per quarter.

Today, family support through family literacy fits the family. Meeting the family with home visits can produce very successful outcomes. Partnerships between home and school, families and community are a lasting impact. Thriving programs work to keep the public up-to-date and build goodwill for families and family literacy throughout communities.

*Home visitation programs: the latest research and testimony from Chapin Hall. http://www.chapinhall.org/article_abstract.aspx?ar=1433&L2=61&L3=129

"CASEL and Mid-Atlantic Regional Laboratory for Student Success (2005). Schools, Families, and Social and Emotional Learning: Ideas and Tools for Working with Parents and Families. Retrieved October 26, 2006 from http://www.casel.org/downloads/parentpacketLSS.pdf * and in Spanish from http://www.casel.org/downloads/parentresourcespanish.pdf *

*Please download the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader (free) to view PDF documents, or convert PDF to HTML via Adobe's conversion form.

Hanson, M. J., Lynch, E. W. (2004). Understanding Families: Approaches to Diversity, Disability, and Risk. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.

Harvard Family Research Project (2005). Complementary Learning. Retrieved October 26, 2006 from http://www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/complementary-learning.html

Klass, C. S. (2003). The Home Visitor’s Guidebook: Promoting Optimal Parent & Child Development, Second Edition. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.

NAEYC (2005). NAEYC’s Code of Ethical Conduct and Statement of Commitment. Retrieved October 26, 2006 from http://www.naeyc.org/about/positions/PSETH05.asp

Olsen, G., Fuller, M. L. (2003). Home-School Relations: Working Successfully with Parents and Families. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Powell, D. R., D’Angelo, D. (2000). Planning and Evaluation Service and Even Start Family Literacy Program: Guide to Improving Parenting Education in Even Start Family Literacy Programs. Washington, DC: US DOE.

Wasik, B. H., Bryant, D. M. (2001). Home Visiting: Procedures for Helping Families, Second Edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Zero to Three (1999). Home Visiting: Reaching Babies and families “Where They Live:” A Report of the Best Available Information from 20 Years of Research and Practice on Home Visiting. Washington, DC: Zero to Three.

Elizabeth Breaux Thompson is the State Even Start Coordinator for Texas.  She was coordinator of a local Even Start program for nine years.  Elizabeth has a BS and MS from Louisiana State University in Family Studies. Elizabeth, her husband, two teenage children and a cat named Tiger all reside in Katy, Texas.

Jacqueline Gramann is TCALL’s Family Literacy Specialist.