FAMILY ADVOCATE (HEAD START)

**GENERAL DESCRIPTION:** Work as a member of a team whose primary role is to engage all families to partner with us to promote children’s healthy development and school readiness. Use knowledge of the principles of family engagement to support families in their roles as their child’s primary educator, encourages parent/child interactions that promote children’s school readiness and healthy development, and enhances family well-being. Provide more intensive and targeted support to vulnerable families and families of children with chronic health conditions and special needs in order to ensure that our engagement strategies meet their specialized needs. **TASKS AND ESSENTIAL JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:** 1. Engage families as partners in their children’s healthy development and school readiness. 2. Participate in outreach, recruitment and attendance follow up activities to engage families in our program and to motivate their active participation 3. Engage families in the Family Engagement Contract process in order to build relationships and shared accountability for promoting children’s development. 4. Individualize family engagement and relationship-building to be appropriate to families’ cultural context, as well as respectful of family circumstances. 5. Engage families in individualized, in-home and group experiences to enhance parent/child interactions that research shows fosters school readiness through consistent family routines, positive guidance and discipline, experience rich home environments and literacy activities. 6. Utilize in-classroom time and home visits to build deeper understanding of the relationship between children’s development and their home environments; as well as to model and coach families in a positive parent/child interaction. 7. Implement a research based Family Curriculum, (Shine On, Families) that extends our classroom curriculum into the family's home, modeling high quality adult- child interactions teachers use in their classrooms for families. Focus on coordination and collaboration with education. 8. Engage in a process of collaborative partnership building with families of children receiving center-based (Early) Head Start services. 9. Family Partnership Process: Utilize family self-assessment information to assist families with self-identified goals to enhance self-sufficiency in areas such as education, employment, housing, and access to community resources. 10. Provide more intensive weekly face to face or phone contact with vulnerable families on caseload as identified through their self-assessment or family interactions/communication. 11. Assure that families receive immediate support during times of crisis, and assist with referrals to community based resources to meet counseling, treatment, entitlement or other needs. 12. Identify and access services and resources responsive to family interests and goals and follow-up with parents to ensure that services met their expectations and needs. 13. Analyze self-sufficiency data and utilize data/results to plan and coordinate a variety of parent cohort groups that allow families to support one another to achieve self-sufficiency goals. 14. Coordinate or refer families to opportunities for continuing education, employment training and other employment services through formal or informal networking in the community. 15. Foster a sense of community and sense of belonging among families in order to strengthen social capital. 16. Conduct group and center-based workshops and activities designed to build social capital and create a welcoming program community committed to family engagement in children’s learning and development. 17. Cultivate family leadership and support their advocacy efforts through participation in program governance bodies such as Policy Council, as well as neighborhood and community based advisory groups. 18. Work in conjunction with center staff and families to plan and conduct a wide variety of family engagement activities that pr…