Smart Start Engages with Families in Partnership with NC DHHS
NCPC will partner with the Department of Child Development and Early Education in a multi-year contract to elevate the voices, needs, and experiences of families within their communities. This contract will continue Smart Start’s prior family engagement work, helping parents gain knowledge about North Carolina’s diverse early childhood education programs and services and equipping them to be leaders in their children’s development.
In the past, NCPC provided oversight, training, and technical assistance to ten Smart Start partnerships. This training helped partnerships convene local family engagement coalitions to join one coalition, the Family Engagement and Leadership Coalition (FELC). Together, the coalitions co-created action plans to enhance family experiences, family participation, and family leadership across the state. They even developed a Family Engagement and Leadership Framework, for state and county family engagement strategies. The framework outlines guiding principles for quality and effective family engagement.
This framework helps family engagement leaders work more effectively with the adults in a child’s life and allows professionals to engage intentionally so that families can build knowledge, know their choices, and advocate for their children. Most notably, the partnerships were able to improve their current connections with families and helped plan future work for agencies involved in this work and for parent leaders.
Smart Start’s prior family engagement work was put on hold due to the pandemic. But a new contract will allow this important work to continue. NCPC will work with participating local partnerships to build and support a “pipeline” of family leaders. Additionally, due to the need to build connections with rural communities, priority will be given to local partnerships in rural counties, focusing on those with a higher likelihood of living in poverty or from a historically marginalized community. Together, NCPC and each participating local partnership can help give a platform for each family members to share their story and to have their voice be heard.
