July 2015

Leadership Team Update
The Strengthening Families Leadership Team meeting was held on Monday, April 27, 2015. A brief report follows:

In the Ten at the Top segment of the meeting Brandy Fox, PA Key and PA Project LAUNCH, explained the current Project LAUNCH initiative.

The Leadership Team Committees reported.

• Steering Committee reported that an evaluation plan will be developed to determine what the next step is in utilizing data.
• Marketing and Media Committee is continuing to update the Strengthening Families website and posting on Facebook and Twitter.
• Professional Development Committee reported on the work of the instructors for the Bringing the Protective Factors Framework to Life in Your Work who have delivered 24 standalone courses and five series, eight more series are scheduled for the year. There were a total of 421 unique participants in the classes over the last quarter.

As a result of previous work by the Roles Committee, a discussion ensued regarding local implementation of the Strengthening Families approach and parent involvement. The participants discussed various ways to foster parent involvement as a team and reviewed various resources created by other states such as Parent Cafés. A small workgroup will be formed to further this conversation. Methods of determining how to measure local impact were also discussed, including surveying the field, focus groups with parents and the three month follow-up survey used with the Bringing the Protective Factors Framework to Life in Your Work series.

Next meeting:
Tuesday, August 4, 2015 at 10:00 AM
Center for Schools and Communities

Policy Spotlight: Strengthening Families Approach at Heart of Advocacy Efforts
Recently the Family Center Network, Pre-K Counts and PSADYN held Capitol Hill Days to share information with legislators and staff about the work that they do to promote strong families. In different ways the programs promote each family’s progress in developing the protective factors that keep their families strong. All of the initiatives support families developing the skills they need to guide their children’s learning and education, find the appropriate services for their family, build and maintain high quality social connections and help parents respond effectively to their children’s evolving development.

Advocacy – Educating members of the legislature about your issues and the benefits or consequences of pending legislation is an important role for your organization.

Advocacy applies in your community, too: building awareness and visibility about your issue and energizing and educating organization partners, advisory board members, constituents of your services, and the residents in your neighborhoods, is important to ensuring that you can continue and grow services that support strong families.

Information about these recent events can be found at:

• Parents as Teachers
• Pre-K Counts
• PSAYDN

Practice Spotlight: Strengthening Families Approach included in Community Innovation Zone Work
As a part of Pennsylvania’s Race to the Top award, the Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL) awarded 12 communities with Early Childhood Education Community Innovation Zone grants. According to the PA Key, the purpose of the Phase I Early Childhood Education Community Innovation Zone grants was to recognize, celebrate, learn from and enhance innovative programs, activities and strategies involving community based efforts to enhance the learning outcomes of young children and reduce the student achievement gap by grade 3.

One of the areas of focus is to increase family supports and engagement. When grantees attended their orientation, they were given information about the Strengthening Families approach and how building the Five Protective Factors help to keep families strong and encourage their involvement in their children’s development. The grantees in phase one are completing their first year. They have received ongoing technical assistance related to program implementation including information about the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework.

OCDEL is currently reviewing applications for Phase II in which they will award an additional 38 grantees. Additional professional development as well as orientation for the new grantees will take place at the Family Engagement Conference in October.

Resource Spotlight: One Tough Job
One Tough Job is a website developed and maintained by the Children’s Trust in Massachusetts. Videos, articles and blogs cover a variety of parenting topics and resources are divided by the child’s age.

Pennsylvania Strengthening Families Leadership Team’s Mission
The Leadership Team works to sustain and weave the Five Protective Factors, which are social and emotional competence of children, knowledge of parenting and child development, social connections, concrete support in times of need and parental resilience, into policies, program and practice across child and family service systems.