The Role of the Parent Services Project
in New York City
The Agenda for Children Tomorrow (ACT), as a local intermediary has provided local oversight, technical assistance and coordination to the PSP project in partnership with Forte George Enrichment Center and Ace Integration Head Start since July 2002. ACT’s intermediary role offered PSP the opportunity to gather practical intelligence on ways for PSP to work in New York and to articulate what their contributions have been to promote family driven services. A summary of the activities that serve as the foundation for the future vision of PSP is described below.

PSP work in 2002, unlike any other year, was designed to support and enhance the existing priorities and activities of both the Washington Heights-Inwood and Bushwick communities. The local partners in these two neighborhoods maximized the resources of PSP in order to build and strengthen the relationships with families who have children within the Head Start and day care centers. The deepening of relationships between the PSP Coordinators and the families and among the families themselves served as the foundation from which to promote the basic family support principles.

The work of the PSP Coordinators reaffirmed the importance of engaging families where they want to be engaged and then building on their strengths to ensure their full participation in determining their children’s future and their own.

Leadership and ownership of family support principles have been acknowledged by coordinators as the lever of influence to allow them to realize their vision. Recognizing this, it is also evident that the relationships of the PSP Coordinators with their host sites contributed to their success in engaging families and their ability to navigate the community. The fact that Bushwick’s host site was less involved in the guidance of the Coordinator’s activities than the site in Washington Heights-Inwood helps to explain the differences in parent participation and community-involvement activity.

Relationship Building and Parent Support

PSP coordinators worked primarily with and through the local Head Start and Day Care centers in their respective communities to engage and recruit parents to participate in a series of relationship building and leadership activities. In addition, they worked to inform local initiatives and projects currently underway to address the needs of parents and their ability to access resources.

The Coordinators used the relationship they had created with each of the Head Start and Day Care Centers to function as parent supporters. They participated in daily welcoming rituals, by meeting and greeting parents at the door of each of the centers as they dropped off or picked up their children. Coordinators used this “check-in” opportunity to tally the parent concerns and needs as well as their wishes and desires. This one-on-one connection was a key strategy used to build trust and comraderie among the parents, as they played the role of a listener, supporter and resource. Implied in this activity, is the PSP Coordinator’s ability to garner the support of child care agency directors who have allowed them to perform this role to complement their existing programs.

Self-Directed Activities

The Coordinator’s relationship building work encapsulated into parent-driven activity that focused on self-employment activities. For example, Cornice Workshops, Towel Decorating, and Flower Arranging workshops were offered to parents in the communities, with attendance rates of over 50 parents. These activities were used by the Parent Service Coordinator to build confidence and a sense of community among the parents. These parent-driven workshops in Washington Heights/Inwood led to the incorporation of a Parent/Community Collaborators Leadership Training. Specifically, the Parent Service Coordinator trained 25 parents in Washington Heights/Inwood through a series of six leadership trainings (see attached curriculum). Parents expressed that the trainings empowered them to seek employment and higher education. Plans for ongoing leadership trainings are underway for 2003.

Program Development Opportunities

The Parent Coordinators in partnership with the Early Childhood Coalitions members, who represent the early care and education community, have actively engaged parents in community to help them understand where the information gaps exists regarding access to child care. The Parent Service Coordinators played a critical role in recruiting parents for focus groups as well as to disseminate and collect over 500 parent surveys used to inform assessments of existing information gaps. Parent turnout at the focus groups was strong, and they were staffed by the Parent Coordinators and facilitated by ACT. (See Attached Summary of Focus Groups and Findings)

The information collected through these two activities informed the first presentation to the NYC Early Learning Council on the needs, location/scope and type of parent access points that should be created in each of these two communities. The Early Learning Project, a federally funded initiative has provided planning dollars to develop parent access centers in both neighborhoods. Parent participation will continue to be instrumental in developing additional strategies to address the information gaps.