Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/building-resilient-families-issues-around-child-abuse-prevention/5017538/
Often families with young children do not know where to turn for help and support. Early care and education programs are natural places to reach out to parents and help them strengthen their parenting skills and social interactions. Even brief moments, such as drop off or pick up times, provide early care and education providers an opportunity to model developmentally appropriate behaviors and skills with children. When warning flags are observed, such as inappropriate discipline, frustration, and anger they are avenues for reaching out and offering parents strength-based, concrete help and support to head off the crisis you know might happen.Strengthening Families Through Early Care and Education is an emerging positive approach, developed by the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), that gives early care and education professionals training, help, and support they need to deal with families under stress and crisis that may put them at risk of abuse and neglect. Strengthening Families builds off of the strong relationships that early care and education programs create with the children and families they work with. These strong relationships are a key building block for effective work to develop protective factors in families that prevent child abuse and neglect. The ...