The parent and caregiver engagement program creates a partnership between families and educators to ensure children’s success by better addressing their academic and social-emotional learning. 

Ensuring parents and caregivers are involved in their children’s educational experience is one of the tools Children’s Aid offers to ensure children learn, grow, and reach their fullest potential.

Partnerships for children’s success

A critical component of our model to provide comprehensive services to the children and families most in need of support, the Children’s Aid parent and caregiver engagement program breaks down the barriers to parental school involvement and extends educational curricula from the schoolroom to the home. This allows for kids’ social and emotional learning to be extended from home into school.

Ultimately, this program facilitates parents' ongoing participation in their children’s education — one of the ways we set up children to succeed. We provide parent-engagement coordinators (hired from within the community) with educational opportunities and professional development training so that they can truly be partners with educators. Additionally, these coordinators convey parental concerns and strategies to the school to better meet the developmental and emotional needs of the children. When possible, parent resource centers are established on campus, making parents feel as if they have a place of their own which improves the likelihood of their involvement in educational activities.

The parent engagement model first took shape more than two decades ago in northern Manhattan with the Ercilia Pepin Leadership Institute. In recent years, we have been able to expand the model to the Bronx with our Family Success Network. Through both programs, we are improving the outcomes for youth because their parents are critical, active partners in their education.