Overcoming the barriers faced in parent partnerships
Creating strong parent partnerships has always been an incredibly important aspect of the early year’s foundation stage and a central aspect of ensuring a child can reach their full potential. However, parents are becoming increasingly busier with often both parents working so these partnerships may not be as strong as they could be.
It is time practice changed, and practitioners and settings became more flexible in their approach. More should be done to build fantastic parent partnerships. It is no longer enough to offer a parents evening once a year and feedback in the morning and evening. This doesn’t build strong enough relationships or give children the confidence, support, and continuity they need to settle fully, actively learn, explore and discover.
What are the barriers?
Unfortunately, there are many barriers that are faced when trying to build parent partnerships:
- Time – This is one of the biggest barriers to parents and practitioners not having the spare time needed to have deep conversations and regular meetings
- Work – Many parents work long hours and often the child is in the setting because they need childcare rather than for a great start too early education. For this reason, many parents appear disinterested.
- Lack of ideas – Sometimes the issue can be practitioners have simply run out of ideas on how to build successful parent partnerships.
Why is it important to overcome these barriers?
Successful parent partnerships are important to ensure the child gains the most positive early learning experiences. Continuity is crucial during the early years, so it is important practitioners can mimic the child’s home routine within the setting. Continuity is also important regarding having shared realistic expectations for the child. Some parents may have their expectations set too high whereas others may be unsure what their child should be achieving. Having regular discussions around development and behavior are important for gaining shared expectations and continuity for the child. It is also important to overcome these barriers and to build good relationships so that the child can feel safe and secure while in the setting. If they see their parents are talking to their key person, it makes a child feel better and more able to build a relationship. Security is important so a child can explore the environment and meet learning goals.
Ways to overcome the barriers –
- Home communication tags – These can be attached to the child’s bag and the quickly update by either the parent or the practitioner with important details that might be forgotten such as the time they were given medicine, last bottle feed, sore bottom, sun cream in bag or any developments in milestones or interests such as started crawling, went to museum at weekend and now loves dinosaurs, etc….
- Parent questionnaires – These can be placed in the child’s bag and filled out at a convenient time for the parents. Place a box for completed questionnaires somewhere accessible, so parents don’t have to wait around to hand it into the office or busy practitioners
- Hold events – Generate some interest by holding events such as coffee morning, bake-offs, parties such as Christmas parties, and fun national events such as National children’s food festival
- Parents evenings – Hold parents evenings at various times across the year, try to be flexible and offer evenings, weekends and morning time slots
- Home learning – Make optional home learning sheets. These don’t have to be compulsory but may offer fun activity suggestions, songs or recipes for the parents to enjoy with the children at home. Encourage parents to bring the sheets back in to provide some evidence
- Story Sack – Create story sacks with diaries that parents can these home with the children and they can add a little picture or entry about how they enjoyed the sack. This helps to create a shared level of expectation.