This story originally appeared in the Aug. 23, 2024 edition of the LINK Reader.
“I thrive on being involved in my children’s life,” said Ashley Barnes, a parent and participant in Brighton Center’s Every Child Succeeds program. “It makes the biggest impact in their well-being, their development, their physical, emotional, all of that. Parent involvement is the most crucial key element in a child’s development, aside from their education and the environment they’re exposed to.”
Barnes’ involvement is an example of family engagement – a partnership among families, educators and community partners to promote children’s learning and development from birth through college and career. Organizations in Northern Kentucky like NaviGo, Learning Grove and Brighton Center have programs that help ensure families are engaged in their child’s learning.
Jessica Schierling oversees a staff of roughly 20 as Brighton Center’s parenting services director. Brighton’s home visitors go into individual homes and provide two home visitation programs, Every Child Succeeds, or ECS, and Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters, also known as HIPPY.
“That’s two-generational work, where we’re working with both the parent and the child, getting that family engagement, keeping the family engaged,” Schierling said. “Both [programs] believe that parents are the first and most important teacher the child is ever going to have.”
The ECS program is for moms from before they give birth until their child is 2. The home visitors work with the parents and babies at the same time. Schierling said the model works with the parent and then has them take those activities and work on them with their child through the week. Schierling said this helps build attachment between parent and child.
Barnes used the ECS program 16 years ago for her son and said she had such a good experience that she has used it again for the past two years for her two other children.
The program served 311 families last year, and there is currently no wait list for the program. It is funded through private dollars and state funding.
“We focus on physical development, brain development, language development, social-emotional development and just basic care to make sure that kids are getting what they need,” Schierling said.
Barnes enrolled in the ECS program as a first-time mom. She said her son has a seizure disorder, and her home visitor taught him how to use sign language.
She said her home visitor always brings different socialization skills and tools for her and her children to work on. They work together, and then Barnes can continue the exercises when the home visitor leaves.
The HIPPY program focuses on getting children age 2-5 ready for kindergarten. The program follows the academic year to get families ready for what school is going to look like. It is funded by United Way and grants that Brighton Center finds each year.
The program also works on developmental activities, social-emotional development and learning through play. Last year the HIPPY program had 186 children and their parents or guardians enrolled. HIPPY currently has 175 families interested and only 98 spots available.
Parents are first educators
Dellisa Ford Edwards works with the department’s two early education childcare facilities – Bright Days Child Development Center and Early Scholars Child Development Center. She’s director of family and child development at Brighton Center.
Edwards said she thinks one of the most important things a child development center can do to help engage a parent is to build trusting relationships.
“When they build these trusting relationships, and the parent and the teacher are working together, we know that those children are going to do better in school,” Ford Edwards said. “On the opposite end, we know that those children who don’t have those involved parents may tend to struggle. But, if that ever happens here, we still do everything possible to try to build both relationships and maximize that child’s learning so they will succeed when they get to school.”
Bright Days Child Development Center serves children ages 6 weeks through 12 years. The Early Scholars Child Development Center serves children ages 6 weeks through 5 years, right before kindergarten.
Ford Edwards said the programs mainly serve Campbell County residents but include some Kenton and Boone County families in Northern Kentucky and Hamilton County families in Southwest Ohio. Over 95% of the families in both programs qualify for free or reduced lunches at school.
“When I think of family engagement, I have to realize that the parent is that child’s first educator,” Ford Edwards said. “So what we are doing is in partnership with that parent. In the early education realm, we are providing opportunities for parents to get involved.”
The Bright Days center is licensed for 140 children, but Ford Edwards said she prefers enrollment to be in the 90s. At Early Scholars, they are licensed for 110 children, and Ford Edwards said she likes for enrollment to be in the 60s.
Neither program has an income requirement to participate. Once a child is ready to leave the programs, they typically enroll in other Brighton Center programs or enroll in public or private schools in the region.
Barnes lives in Dayton, and so, as her children age out of the ECS program, they attend Dayton Public Schools, where Barnes said she still works at being involved.
“As a parent, we mold our children into who they are,” Barnes said. “They mimic the things we do. Their emotions bounce off of our emotions.
“It’s very important to be involved in your child’s life. I don’t understand why some people are not, and I’m a working mom. I work two jobs and still make time for my babies no matter what, and I’m a single mom at that, if that tells you anything,” Barnes said.
“I still go to football games, I still go to birthday parties, I still take my kids out places, I still teach them right from wrong. I’m very, very involved.”
Relationship with the family
Like Brighton Center, Learning Grove offers family outreach programs to ensure families have what they need to succeed.
Learning Grove’s Deanna Lane oversees the family outreach department, Head Start and Early Head Start services as vice president of family and community services. She said Learning Grove identifies the families’ needs and connects them to necessary resources.
“We really just wrap services around the family,” Lane said. “So, in other words, we provide child care, but as an extension of our child care, we really focus on the well-being of families and trying to get them to a place of self-sufficiency.”
There are 32 Early Head Start-funded children enrolled across Northern Kentucky and 153 families on the waitlist. The program’s funding comes from federal and state funding along with some donors.
Lane said that Learning Grove is seeing a high number of children in need of additional services, whether from a social-emotional standpoint or with children struggling academically.
She said one program she works with in Cincinnati’s Lower Price Hill neighborhood has close to half of the preschool classroom in individualized education programs for special services.
“Behaviors are very, very challenging,” Lane said. “It’s the relationship with the family that can really make a difference. It doesn’t necessarily solve it, but, if we can work with families and families can work with their children, then we have a better chance of being successful and getting the child on track. Whereas if we don’t have that family relationship, then it really makes things a lot more difficult.”
Working toward self-sufficiency
Family engagement isn’t just about parents being involved in their child’s education but ensuring the families have what they need to be successful. Lane said Learning Grove provides families with things like diapers, a food pantry and clothing, and helps them find employment and housing.
“What we see will happen is that we’ll get families to a point where they’re stable, and then they fall back,” Lane said. “They might lose their job, or they get evicted from their apartment, or something big happens that takes them back to this instability. Then, we will work again to get them to that point of stabilization. It’s challenging to get them to a point where they are self-sufficient.”
Learning Grove offers child care and preschool for children ages 6 weeks to 5 years. The centers work with a school’s resource coordinator who looks for children in that age group and connects them to early childhood experiences and needed resources.
Ford Edwards said physical health is also a barrier to a family’s engagement.
She said some families aren’t eating healthfully, so they give children breakfast, a hot lunch and a snack at their centers before they go home. If a family is struggling for food, they bundle services within Brighton Center and send them to their food pantry. If a family has trouble keeping their lights on or has bills to pay, they send them to the family center to get the help that they need.
Brighton Center has used their services to help Barnes and her family with things like diapers, wipes and clothes.
“If I was to tell my worker, like, ‘Hey, I’m really struggling, I need this kind of help. Is there any way you can help me?’ She will do it,” Barnes said. “Or they will refer out to their agency, with different partners through the agency for different types of help, which is really nice.”
‘I just feel like I miss out’
Barnes said there is a financial hardship that comes with being a parent, which is one of the reasons she works two jobs.
“I’m not always able to afford the things that they need, and it makes me feel bad, but it’s one of those things. It happens when you become an adult,” she said. “Things are challenging, and it just kind of is what it is.”
Another challenge Barnes said she faces while trying to stay involved with her children’s education is finding time while balancing work.
“My new [child], the only challenge I face is feeling like I don’t have enough time,” Barnes said. “Just because I am a working mom, she goes to day care all day, during the day, while I’m at work. There’s three nights that I work in the evening, and I just feel like I miss out on her, on spending time with her – with all the kids, honestly.”
Barnes is pregnant and said ECS will work with her and her new baby. When that child ages out, she will have used the program for six years.
Once families are stable, Lane said they can begin working with them on their dreams – whether they want to go to school or pursue a career.
Helping immigrants
Lane said they work with a large population of Hispanic families, and Schierling said both Brighton Center home visitation programs serve a high immigrant population.
“When we ask them what are their dreams, they’re not really able to tell us that because it’s really the here and now,” Lane said. “It’s the ‘I just want to make sure I can feed my children.’ I want to make sure that my children have access to early childhood experiences. I want to make sure that I have the financial means to provide for my family.”
Schierling said they have home visitors who speak Spanish, English, French and Arabic, so they can offer the curriculum in multiple languages.
“For our families who are coming here from other countries, Every Child Succeeds, they’ve never given birth here in America or raised a child in America,” she said. “Sometimes they use it as a ‘what does it look like when I go to the hospital and give birth?’ Or ‘what does it look like when I take my child to the doctor?’
“And then HIPPY, it’s more about the school system, which is going to be completely different than the ones in the country that they’re coming from. This gives them an additional way to see how an American school system works.”
More than involved
Ford Edwards said she thinks that there’s a difference between involved parents and engaged parents.
She said involvement includes volunteering, chaperoning, participating in conferences, and communicating with the teacher, but engagement takes it a step further. Engaged parents are involved in what happens day-to-day in their center. They are surveyed and on advisory committees.
“It is important to us that we hear their voice,” she said. “We call it the customer’s voice, the parent’s voice. So we want them to give their input and take ownership over ideas they come up with in the classroom.”
Family engagement extends beyond early learning. It also includes college and career readiness.
Kathy Burkhardt, executive director of NaviGo, works with public school districts in Northern Kentucky on college and career prep.
NaviGo partners with all NKY school districts through the Northern Kentucky Educational Co-Op and with public libraries to work with children not enrolled in public schools. It is funded by donations and grants.
Burkhardt said a big part of what they do is work with families as their children are in high school to help them prepare for college and careers.
“Right now, we have career camps in partnership with Gateway in all the in-demand career sectors,” Burkhardt said. “A big piece of that in family engagement is that many families or caretakers right now are not always aware of the options that are out there for you in terms of pathways for the future.”
NaviGo partners with over 200 businesses to get students into college and career work-based learning experiences while in high school in partnership with their schools. That could be anything from dual credit to paid internships and co-op.
“We think family engagement is about families coming to a center or to school, but it’s really about that co-partnership,” Burkhardt said. “When you want a family member or a caretaker to be engaged, we’re not talking about just showing up for events. We’re talking about being engaged in that child’s educational and developmental journey from prenatal all the way through graduation and when they become an adult to go into their post-secondary options, whatever that might be.”
Burkhardt said they try to work to involve families who may not typically be involved. She said this includes being mindful of things like who contacts families, how welcoming your school and center are, listening to what parents are saying they need, and their expertise on their own children.
Burkhardt said the key transition periods for a child from early childhood to kindergarten to elementary school to middle school to high school and then post-secondary are difficult transitions because so much is changing.
“Everything’s changing with the child’s developmental level; everything’s changing with the level of support they want and or need,” she said. “But it’s all equally important, and I would say, at the middle and high school level, it continues to be important, but it just looks different along the way. Sometimes people think, ‘Oh, well, they’re in middle and high school. We don’t have to do anything anymore.’ It’s actually quite the opposite.”
Burkhardt said there is a connection between preparing a child for kindergarten socially and emotionally and the skills employers are looking for.
“We do a lot of focus on the social and emotional piece and making sure that children can think critically, that they can problem-solve, that they can self-regulate so that they are prepared when they reach kindergarten,” Lane said.
Burkhardt said those skills in the workforce are called essential workplace skills or soft skills.
“Being able to provide children with those experiences and stressing the importance of that with families – but also providing opportunities for family engagement, not just during school, but outside of school within a community, like a public library.
“Everybody plays a role,” Burkhardt said. “Community organizations, nonprofits – what does a community offer families, because it can’t be all on a school to do that or all on an early learning center. It really is embracing family engagement as a community. What kind of opportunities are out there?”