Practitioner section

• Improving outcomes
• Who are you trying to reach?
• Engaging parents
• What services should delivered?
• Training the workforce - who does the work?
• Monitoring and Evaluation

Why work with parents?

The evidence is overwhelming. Parents' involvement in their children's early learning has a huge and lasting impact. We also know that parental involvement is more successfully achieved through a partnership approach to work with parents.

As the Warnock report stated so many years ago in 1978:

"Parents can be effective partners only if professionals take notice of what they say and how they express their needs, and treat their contribution as intrinsically important."

This section will help you put this partnership approach into practice and deliver services that give parents the understanding, skills and confidence to help their children succeed. The earlier you are able to engage parents in their children's learning as part of their daily life at home, the greater the positive impact on children at risk of learning delay and poor outcomes is likely to be.

The pages within this section will help you:

• understand the rationale for involving parents in improving outcomes for children
• make decisions about who you are trying to reach
• think about how you are going to reach and engage parents of children at risk of learning delay
• decide what services will meet the needs of diverse and vulnerable families
• understand what parents need from early years services
• ensure that all families are included.