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Module 5: Family

Module 5: Family

Welcome to this Module on Family based on the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) Recommended Practices. In this module you will learn effective family-professional partnership practices and why strong and trusting family-professional partnerships are crucial for children with disabilities.

Learning Objectives

Completion of this module will enable you to:

  • Explain what are family-centered practices, describe how to build the capacity of families, and build trusting partnerships with families.
  • Use strategies that build relationships with families and include opportunities to build the capacity of families.

Each module developed by the Recommended Practices Module (RPM) project introduces and illustrates the practices grouped in one of the eight topic areas in the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) Recommended Practices. The DEC Recommended Practices were developed to provide guidance about the most effective ways to improve the learning outcomes and promote the development of young children, birth through five years of age, who have or are at-risk for developmental delays or disabilities.

Download: DEC Recommended Practices

Module 5 is aligned to the topic area of family and focuses on the following recommended practices:

Recommended Practices

  • F1.Practitioners build trusting and respectful partnerships with the family through interactions that are sensitive and responsive to cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic diversity.

  • F2.Practitioners provide the family with up-to-date, comprehensive and unbiased information in a way that the family can understand and use to make informed choices and decisions.

  • F3.Practitioners are responsive to the family's concerns, priorities, and changing life circumstances.

  • F4.Practitioners and the family work together to create outcomes or goals, develop individualized plans, and implement practices that address the family's priorities and concerns and the child's strengths and needs.

  • F5.Practitioners support family functioning, promote family confidence and competence, and strengthen family-child relationships by acting in ways that recognize and build on family strengths and capacities.

  • F6.Practitioners engage the family in opportunities that support and strengthen parenting knowledge and skills and parenting competence and confidence in ways that are flexible, individualized, and tailored to the family's preferences.

  • F7.Practitioners work with the family to identify, access, and use formal and informal resources and supports to achieve family-identified outcomes or goals.

  • F8.Practitioners provide the family of a young child who has or is at risk for developmental delay/disability, and who is a dual language learner, with information about the benefits of learning in multiple languages for the child's growth and development.

  • F9.Practitioners help families know and understand their rights.

  • F10.Practitioners inform families about leadership and advocacy skill-building opportunities and encourage those who are interested to participate.