Family Care Staff Explores Common Strategies

Los Angeles Educational Partnership's Family Care staff came together this week to explore ways in which individual programs can work together to build better links between communities and their schools.

Everyone from health workers, to para-professional parents to on-campus social workers discussed how they have worked and could work to strengthen among other things family health, early childhood literacy and parent involvement.

"Our goal is to discuss best practices to get an idea of what's working in one program so that other programs can use those things as a model," said Family Care Director Helen Kleinberg.

The Family Care initiative works with schools and their communities to develop and implement effective strategies for increasing access to health, social and community services for children and families to support student academic achievement and to strengthen the role parents play at the school site and in the community. Family Care collaborates with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), Project Grad, the Los Angeles Urban Funders, Pacoima Beautiful and the parent and community agencies in the San Fernando/Pacoima area. Family Care programs are offered at 12 elementary schools, three middle schools, one high school and one primary center.

"We talk a lot about teachers being accountable, but ultimately parents are their child's first teacher," said Jerry De Felice, a campus manager at Broadous Elementary School, who works with students in improving their academic achievement. "I think parents want to have a larger role and we're here to teach them how."

Karen Alvarado, a campus manager at Pacoima Middle School, said she hopes her discussions with health advocates and school readiness para-professionals will give her some effective methods to perform her job better.

"We're all here to do the same thing-build one-on-one relationships with students and parents," she said. "There are a lot of things people are doing here to make that happen."

Health promoter Elsa Rosas shared with her peers what she believed the characteristics of a good teacher should be.

"To me, if a child isn't doing well in class or missing school a good teacher should be knocking on that child's door to try to find out why," she said.

Speaking at the retreat, LAEP President Susan Way-Smith praised the Family Care staff for their dedication. "The children you are working with are our future," she said. "It is that work that lays the foundation for other LAEP programs which build upon what you have done."

	Related Links School Readiness Project Sets Foundation for Successful Learning Learn more about LAEP's Family Care initiative

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