Increasing Father Engagement in Head Start
How a web-based tool helped this program better support their community
From time to time, Parent Gauge will be featuring special guest blogs from users in the Head Start community who have experienced the power of Parent Gauge. They’ll share with you some of the unique ways that the tool has enabled them to improve their parent engagement efforts. Check out this great story about improving support for fathers from CASE WV!
Here is a story about how a program in West Virginia used the information from their Parent Gauge interviews to make an enormous difference in the lives of their families. This program is funded by Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visitation (MIECHV) and funded by West Virginia Home Visitation Program (WVHVP), within the Office of Maternal, Child and Family Health (OMCFH) using the Early Head Start model (EHS).
Community Action of South Eastern West Virginia (CASE WV) began as one of the earliest Parent Gauge users over a year ago. Trella Coppola, who manages Parent Gauge for them, told us this story. During the Parent Gauge guided conversations, they found out that several of the Early Head Start Model fathers felt disconnected not only from other Early Head Start families, but from their entire community. The Early Head Start staff set out to find a way to help.
They discovered in their community a remarkable resource—a retired US Army police officer who had spent a career training Special Forces teams. This retired officer had the age and the experience that enabled him to be almost a father himself to the Early Head Start dads, many of whom said that he changed their lives by making them feel more respected and connected than they had ever been.
One of the MIECHV Early Head Start Program models’ dads showed so much interest and initiative in wanting to help other fathers that the WV Home Visitation Program sent him with his wife and two children and a staff member for several full days of training at the 24/7 Dads Program sponsored by the National Fatherhood Institute. He will be applying the knowledge he learned from the 24/7 Dad program to work with dads in the Early Head Start Model Program.
The greatest value of Parent Gauge is that it helps create honest conversations among Early Head Start Model’s staff members and family members. These honest conversations can uncover parts of lives that can be made better with the initiative and the understanding and the love that is present in every program and every person who devotes their life to Early Head Start families.
Bob Manning is the National Head Start Association’s Senior Advisor for Community Engagement. Since retiring in late 2017, he has been working as a full-time volunteer to help Head Start programs understand how Parent Gauge can help them create better understanding, communication, and engagement with their families.
