Working with Parents, Carers and Families in the Early Years

The essential guide

Teresa Wilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317429401
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Parents have a crucial role in supporting children's learning, development and well-being. The act of forming effective partnerships with families and carers is a key feature of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Achieving this takes time, reflective practice, skill and a solid understanding of the barriers that can impede forming effective working relationships with parents.

This guide offers an informed and comprehensive framework for working with parents, drawing on the latest evidence and containing practical advice from practitioners and parents, to support sound partnership practice. Full of examples and activities for training and resources to support practice across a wide range of settings, it focuses on key areas such as:

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• Working with parents of different aged children

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• The development of strategies to support the relationship

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• The barriers to partnership working, including cultural differences and working with hard to reach families

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• Setting up home and setting visits

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• Creating parent-friendly environments

Including case studies and questions for reflective practice, this book will be ideal for Early Years students on Foundation Degrees, Childhood Studies Courses and those training to become Early Years teachers as well as Early Years practitioners and managers responsible for staff training.

Chapter 1

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Introducing families, theory and partnership work

The importance of working in partnership with parents

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In this chapter, we shall be looking at:

• parental involvement in education

• the diverse nature of the family

• theories relating to the family

• risk and resilience

• parenting styles

• what partnership is, and why it is important.

The importance of developing positive relationships and strong engagements with parents in order to enhance the learning and development of children has not always been recognised: indeed, it was not until the 1944 Education Act that there was any specific mention of parental input as a principle in key legislation and even from that point and onwards to the Plowden Report in 1967, there was an implicit view that parents were seen as ‘a problem rather than a support for schools’ (Muschamp et al., 2007, p. 4) and the purpose of schools was partly to make up for the shortfalls of some parents. This assumption has been overturned through a proliferation of evidence, which has established that children benefit from the involvement of parents in their learning (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003; Melhuish et al., 2008; Sylva et al., 2004). For example, there is now clear evidence that:

• ‘Parents’ influence is important throughout childhood and adolescence’ Department for Education and Skills (DfES, 2007, p. 5).

• ‘Recent research has shown the importance of parental warmth, stability, consistency and boundary setting in helping children develop … skills’ (DfES, 2007, p. 5).

• ‘There is clearly significant public interest in making it as easy as possible for parents – fathers and mothers – to engage as partners in their children’s learning and development from the earliest age’ (DfES, 2007, p. 6).

• ‘The home learning environment is important for school readiness in addition to benefits associated with pre-school’ (Melhuish et al., 2008, p. 108).

• ‘The most important finding from the point of view of this review is that parental involvement in the form of “at home good parenting” has a significant positive effect on children’s achievement and adjustment even after all other factors shaping attainment have been taken out of the equation. … The scale of the impact is evident across all social classes and all ethnic groups’ (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003, p. 4).

• ‘Many professionals in contact with families have brief and important opportunities to identify and mobilise support for children with persistent behavioural problems’ (Khan, 2014, p. 13).

To sum up, a positive and healthy relationship between parent and child supports development and learning. It is in the interests of everyone (children, families, practitioners, wider society) to support ‘at home good parenting’ (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003, p. 4).

Parents and education: a brief history

Parents were not always seen as their child’s ‘first and most enduring educator’, as they are today (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority/Department for Education and Employment, 2000, p. 9). Neither have they universally been considered a positive influence on their children – for example, when raising their children in poverty during the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the nineteenth century. During that time, there was widespread enforced emigration of children to the colonies: New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Australia, largely because: ‘Emigration enthusiasts generally believed that poverty and crime were the result of a lack of moral rectitude’ and therefore the removal of children of the poor ‘sought to prevent the children from sabotaging the nation’ (Bates, 2009, p. 146). The approach between then and now has changed considerably.

It was not until the Industrial Revolution that there was a growing and widespread need for parents to find childcare for their children. Prior to this, children would accompany their parents in their work within rural communities, or be cared for by extended family members (Burnette, 2008). However, the ‘movement of work into factories increased the difficulty of combining work and childcare. In most factory work the hours were rigidly set, and women who took the jobs had to accept the twelve or thirteen hour days’ (Burnette, 2008, p. 15). As women’s economic role has increased and families have dispersed geographically, so has the need for childcare increased beyond the family. It can be seen through statistical data that women with children are represented to much the same extent in terms of numbers as those without children:

The gap in employment rates for women with and without children has narrowed over the last fifteen years, from 5.8 percentage points in 1996 to just 0.8 percentage points in the final quarter of 2010. In this quarter, 66.5 per cent of mothers were in work and 67.3 per cent of women without a dependent child were in work.

(Office for National Statistics, 2011, p. 2)

The diverse nature of the family

A contemporary model of the family could be more challenging to define than more traditional models. The word ‘family’ can have a wider meaning for some than others; it can refer to closest friends as well as family (Mason and Tipper, 2008). The saying: ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ also implies that ‘family’ can mean those who live and perhaps work together in a community.

A family today could be one of a range of models. It is unlikely to comply with anthropologist George Murdock’s 1949 definition of the family: ‘Characterised by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults’ (cited in Yeo and Lovell, 2003). This model does not take into account that ‘children are now likely to experience a variety of family structures before adulthood’ (Panico et al., 2010, p. 3).

Activity

What characteristics do you recognise in the definition above? Do most of the people you know fit into the definition and, if they don’t, how could you adapt it so it was more inclusive of all families?

If we understand the purpose of the family to be sexual, economic, reproductive and educational, a micro-group of society which economically supports members of the family group and socialises children to live within the norms of a particular society, then all of the above models are compliant. Additional complexities are added when social norms, values or expectations within sub-cultures of social groups are contrasting, leading to some need for transition management when children move from one dominant cultural expectation to another, as a child might move from their home to an early education or care setting.

Our own childhoods and the expectations, values and habits from our own family life will have given us our assumed model of what a family is, but there are many different styles of family. Our experiences are unique and will shape values and behaviours. The range of family frameworks extends from the nuclear family of parents and children to the extended family of three or more generations living close to each other; from same-sex parents to the kinship of close friends who have become ‘like parents’ (Mason and Tipper, 2008); from protected children to neglected children.

All the family members can have an influence on the dynamic and behaviour of the family as a whole (see family systems theory and ecological systems theory in Chapter 2). So when the family surrounding the child is considered, there may be many more family members who have an influence. As a practitioner, you may want to reflect upon whether your relationship is solely with the primary carer who brings and collects the child from your setting, or with other members of the family, including fathers and grandparents, as well as siblings.

In general, fathers are still less visible than mothers within the education system. In a survey: ‘When asked who was most involved in their child’s school life – them or their partner, mothers were almost five times more likely than fathers to say they were most involved’ (DfE, 2010, p. 2).

Theories relating to the family

Attachment theory

Attachment theory demonstrates the function of the relationship between caregiver and infant/child in terms of security, safety and predictable behaviour. A child who is securely attached (who has a close and warm bond) to their primary carer (or carers) has a base from which it is possible to explore, discover and take risks, in which to learn and grow, in the knowledge that the carer consistently offers a place of safety. John Bowlby was the originator of attachment theory (Bowlby, 1953). His hypothesis was that children need a primary carer (usually the mother) to form a relationship with, which produces a secure attachment, and without the relationship, the ‘separation and loss’ felt by the child has an impact on future learning and social and emotional development.

From the point of view of the child, the purpose of attachment behaviour is to maintain a warm and sensitive relationship with their caregiver. Therefore, the varieties of attachment behaviour will elicit distinct responses, depending on their relat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Introducing families, theory and partnership work: the importance of working in partnership with parents
• 2 Introducing legislative and policy frameworks
• 3 The importance of reflection
• 4 Supporting transitions and home and setting visits
• 5 Partnership work with different ages
• 6 Parent-friendly environments
• 7 Making connections between home and setting
• 8 Identifying, reflecting on and reducing barriers to partnership work
• 9 Concluding points: skills and strategies for working in partnership
• Appendix: Early Years Teachers’ Standards (NCTL, 2013)
• Index