There is a vast amount of research supporting the value of engaging the student’s family in the educational process. Effectively engaging and collaborating with families in school context can make a huge difference in the success and well-being of students. This discussion has been going on for years, according to Moore (2010), and it’s in all the legislation and reforms. Per Moore (2010), high performing schools almost always report high parent and family involvement and supportive school environments. It’s clear that getting engaged with parents and families is a critical step of any successful school initiative, including school mental health. What’s lacking in most cases is a systematic (and I’ll add proactive) approach to interacting with families and encouraging their involvement.

Parent involvement and family-school partnerships are not surprisingly a critical aspect of providing mental health services in school systems practice. Part of your efforts in expanding the role of OT in school mental health efforts will depend on your ability to effectively communicate with parents and encourage their support. Don’t assume that this will always be easy. Moreover, don’t assume that parents will have an understanding of a tiered or public health approach to school mental health. It’s never too early to begin to think about how you will intentionally elicit the support from parents and frame school mental health efforts! Kim and Sheridan (2015) identified three essential aspects of successful parental involvement strategies: 1) base interactions on collaborative partnering between the family and school personnel, 2) promote healthy relationships between families and school and between parents and children, 3) focus on frequent positive communication. Your goal: think about engaging with families in ways that can improve student outcomes related to achievement and positive mental health.

It's About Partnering!!

Family-School Partnership: is based on cooperation, coordination, communication and collaboration (Kim & Sheridan, 2015). Family-school partnerships are rooted in an understanding that there needs to be a reciprocal relationship between what is being learned at school and what is being learned at home. The quality of the intersection between home and school is important in a family-school partnership approach.

School mental health efforts are best addressed from the perspective of a family-school partnership. These efforts require more than just parental involvement but opportunities to truly partner with parents and guardians and make sure that what’s happening in school and at home are dovetailing as seamlessly as possible.

Paradigm Shift

Within mental health there has been a gradual shift from practitioner-focused to family-focused to family-driven models. Family-driven models, which presently predominate best practice principles, support the need to partner with families. Per Osher and Osher (2002), family-driven services are the most effective because families that genuinely engage in goal setting and other tasks related to their child’s mental health needs take ownership and are more effective participants in efforts to help their child meet his or her goals. This paradigm shift depends on a clear shift in thinking that the families are knowledgeable members of the team and should be involved in generating solutions, share in decision making, and can best provide the family-specific information about needs and resources which services should be based on.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) defines parent engagement as an ongoing, reciprocal, strengths-based, collaborative partnership. School professionals should see parental engagement as a partnership that supports shared responsibility for observation, decision-making, reinforcement, and action. Supporting students’ school success and maximizing the potential impact of positive mental health promotion efforts will require strong collaboration and frequent communication with family members (Reinke & Frey, 2012). The foundation for a strong family-school partnership, per Reinke and Frey (2012), starts with the family’s very first contact with the school and needs to be encouraged by making them feel welcome, supported, and valuable members of the school community.

Schools are an ideal setting for offering family-centered supports. When these services are embedded in school-based programs, some key barriers to parent engagement may be minimized. Research also supports the idea that school-based mental health efforts may be well received by parents and guardians because they make access easier to mental health services and there is less perceived stigma associated with mental health services provided at school versus other behavioral health settings (Herman, 2014). Nonetheless, the reality remains that many programs report low parental involvement and high attrition rates—typically only a small percentage of parents become involved. As Herman (2014) reiterated, lack of parental involvement is a major obstacle to fully realizing the benefits of school-supported mental health programming and services.

Garnering parent involvement can be established by helping them recognize the many ways in which their child’s academic success and positive mental health is actually linked to their involvement (Herman, 2014). Parents are more likely to engage when their involvement is not only encouraged and welcomed, but also expected (Shephard, 2014). It is important for them to understand that school staff and parents have an equal stake in child and academic outcomes and share many overlapping goals.

Some additional strategies that may increase the building of a shared vision/partnership between school staff and parents were recommended by Moore (2010):

• Providing support and encouragement for effective involvement

• Collect surveys from parents to learn about the child and his/her family, family routines, family likes and dislikes, parents expectations of school-based programs

• Treat the families as experts on the child

• Discuss the systemic issues that might interfere with home-school communication and collaboratively problem solve ways to overcome these barriers (e.g. preferred modes of communication, email, access to Internet)

• Encourage class visits and create parent volunteer opportunities

• Create resources for parents an distribute them to the parents

• Be mindful that many families may need some problem solving support in overcoming some basic pragmatic issues like child care, transportation, and/or translation services

It is important to remember that it is the quality of the school professional-parent relationship—not the amount of contact—that is most associated with positive academic and mental health outcomes.

Intentionally Sharing Positive Communication

It is much easier to build a relationship with parents and families when you already have a relationship built on trust and positive experiences (Herman, 2014). It is essential that more positive information is reported than negative information because if a parent is most often contacted when there is a problem or concern, he or she may come to view school and their involvement in school as aversive (Herman, 2014). The rule of thumb—2 positives for every negative. Webster-Stratton and Reid (2010) suggested that school staff think of their interactions with each parent like a piggy bank. Every positive interaction and report is like making a deposit and every negative report or shared concern is like withdrawing funds. You want to have a full bank!!

When problems arise or students need extra support for academic, social, or behavioral concerns, engaging parents in the plan is critical. Engagement and working through concerns with respect to readiness for addressing problems is helped tremendously by a standing positive relationship with the parent. Be mindful that parents will vary with respect to their readiness to address concerns and accept supportive services/supports. A reluctance to participate or accept certain services may be rooted in their own bad associations with school or negative perceptions. It is your job to work with them through this ambivalence and to understand ambivalence as a normal response. Providing them with information, answering their questions, and listening to their concerns are critical ways of providing support through the ambivalence. Covell (2000) also noted that the most important thing for school professionals to consider in fostering children’s mental health is to be sensitive to the parent’s level of self-efficacy, role construction, and need for parental self-care.

Engaging families in services requires effective communication skills on the part of school professionals. Romanelli et al. (2008) developed the acronym, LEAP, to identify key communication skills needed to effectively interact with parents.

L = listening—involves an attitude of respect and a appreciating that the parent is the expert on the child. Listening means not talking!! A good rule of thumb is to reflect on if you are talking less than the person whom you are try to listen to.

E = Empathize—refers to honoring and respective the parent’s perspective—trying to understand (not agree with) the parent’s perspective. The parent should feel like he or she was heard and understood. At its core, empathy involves respecting parents’ wishes for the child and their concerns.

A = Avoid—blaming, judging, giving unsolicited advice. Be aware of how your own assumptions, attitudes, beliefs, and biases influence your work and practice. The Michigan Department of Education provided all school personnel with a proactive positive beliefs chart about all families to help school personnel adopt a support perspective when working with families. (See Bullet Points Below)

P = Partnering—your efforts should be truly as collaborative as possible with the family. Collaboration requires giving family members an opportunity to provide input, help families make sense of their child’s behavior(s)—which you had practice with in a recent module—asking family members which goals/needs should be prioritized, and intentionally designing ways that your efforts can be supported in activities that can be done at home.

• All families have strengths and need to know they are important

• All families can contribute to their child’s out of home care and education

• All families can learn how to promote their child’s learning, development, and health

• All families have useful ideas and insights about their child

• All families really do care deeply about their children

For many students, CICO will provide adequate tier 2 support. According to Moore (2010), however, rarely do parents get integrated into the CICO process or when they do it is in an informative way (i.e. explaining to them what CICO is). Integrating parents in the CICO process is a necessary strategy for making sure that parents and school personnel are approach and reinforcing the student in the same way. How might you consider involving (not just informing) parents and families in CICO? How might you approach making sure that relevant parent goals are reflected in the CICO plan?

Family Check up

Watch the following video on an evidence-based strategy developed at the University of Oregon: Family Check UP. It is based on CICO and motivational interviewing.

http://www.pattan.net/Videos/Browse/Single/?code_name=41_positive_family_supports.

Retrieved from: TOT 2: Understanding the Parent Perspective: Communicating and Involving Parents (2019)