In our mental health and youth violence prevention work, there are partners we routinely engage during program development: mental health practitioners, school administrators, community leaders, and community members. It is crucial that we engage students and their families (including families of young children) as key partners because often these community members are the people our programs aim to serve. Engaging families and youth early in program planning gives us an opportunity to incorporate their perspectives. Additionally, their valuable insights help us make key decisions during the planning and implementation phases of programs to ensure we are addressing their needs.
While the processes of engaging youth versus engaging families have different best practices, they share common values. For example, they both incorporate the value of “nothing about us, without us”—that is, any decisions about serving families or youth should be made with the full participation of youth and families. Both approaches also focus on mutual respect among families, youth, and adults, as well as cultural and linguistic competency, recognizing that a community’s culture impacts the lives of its members.
In addition to addressing these shared values, we consider incorporating the following best practices into our program development work. Doing so creates programs that are accessible and beneficial to families and children and, ultimately, have a significant impact on our communities.
Family Engagement Best Practices
- Move from the idea of “parent involvement” to “family engagement.” Actively engage families and recognize that entire families—not just parents—may be involved in the care of children.
- Implement a family-driven approach to family engagement in early care and education and in schools. Families should have a primary decision-making role in the care and education of their children.
- Establish meaningful roles for families through family-school partnerships. Families should actively work with educators to make decisions on policies and procedures that affect all children in their community and share responsibility for their children’s educational outcomes.
Successful Family Engagement at Work
Examples of successful family engagement are taking place at National Resource Center grantee sites across the country, including sites in Massachusetts and Michigan. In Massachusetts, the state’s Project LAUNCH team is helping families address sources of stress, and is partnering with families and pediatricians to promote social-emotional wellness in children. One example of this work is the Boston Public Health Commission’s Early Childhood Mental Health Parent/Caregiver Council, which empowers parents/caregivers of young children to take active leadership roles in their community. The team helps parents access jobs and trainings, allowing them to better engage with and work alongside community partners and government officials on efforts such as improving schools. Parents feel empowered that their new skills—including public speaking and working towards systems change—help their voices to be heard.
The Massachusetts Project LAUNCH team recognizes the value in empowering parents to voice their perspectives and ideas to build effective health-delivery systems that are truly family centered.
Michigan Safe Schools/Healthy Students is also taking an innovative approach to family engagement. A partnership between the state’s Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and Parent Action for Healthy Kids is making progress toward incorporating “authentic family engagement” into child-serving and education systems. Through collaboration at the state and community level, the team identified gaps in school-to-family partnerships and subsequently developed strategies for strengthening the voices of families and increasing these partnerships to improve student educational outcomes.
The Michigan team found that gaps in school-to-family partnerships exist at both the state and community level. This discovery led them to start creating and getting buy-in on a set of philosophical beliefs about family engagement to be integrated across state agencies. Equally important is the team's development and testing of a Family Engagement Perception Instrument, which aims to measure clinician and educator attitudes towards family engagement.
Youth Engagement Best Practices
- Develop well-defined youth-adult partnerships. Partnerships should include a clear purpose, transparency and trust between youth and adults, and a willingness from both sides to learn, generate ideas, and draw on one another’s strengths.
- Create meaningful opportunities for young people to grow—in developing both themselves and the youth-serving systems within their communities.
- Allocate resources to support youth engagement including staff, meeting space, stipends, and transportation for youth.
- Understand that youth safety always takes precedence over youth participation. For example, use trauma-informed youth engagement exercises to help young people tell their stories in ways that minimize or eliminate the likelihood of re-traumatization.
Successful Youth Engagement at Work
Safe Schools/Healthy Students grantee sites across the United States—such as in Pennsylvania and Nevada—are also engaging in successful youth engagement. The Pennsylvania Safe Schools/Healthy Students Partnership is creating safe and supportive schools and communities in three counties. To address mental health issues and alarming suicide rates among youth, York County created the York County Youth Mental Health Alliance. The initial goal of the alliance was to engage youth through schools to plan dynamic activities for Mental Health Awareness Month in May 2017. Activities aim to increase awareness of mental health issues, reduce stigma surrounding these issues, and teach ways to support those who are struggling to maintain mental wellness.
The youth-driven alliance has attracted dozens of youth, adults, and representatives from York County’s 17 school districts to its planning meetings, which has created the momentum to expand its goal beyond the May health observance. Newly formed youth-adult subcommittees, driven by the ideas and passion of youth and supported by adults, are planning a 5K run and a conference on youth mental health wellness; working with athletic directors and coaches to share information at sports games; creating a public education campaign; and organizing community outreach opportunities, like a youth-led town hall meeting with community leaders.
Another example of successful youth engagement is taking place in Lyon County, Nevada, where the Healthy Communities Coalition is increasing access to behavioral and mental health interventions for school-age students. The coalition’s Stand Tall Program has a process in place to involve youth in decision making for policies, procedures, and activities in their small rural community. Participating youth are paired with adult mentors who train them to be school and community leaders and youth advocates.
The Stand Tall Program also provides high-school students with the opportunity to regularly meet, learn, and talk about healthy living—by being drug, tobacco, and alcohol free. Participating youth receive training in the areas of leadership, tobacco prevention, mental health, healthy living, and government. School administrators, teachers, and social workers tout the benefits of the Stand Tall Program for participating students through improved grades, better interactions with their peers, and increased interest and involvement in other school activities.
