When engaging with a child, you are also engaging with their family and community. Early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals know that working with families and supporting them in their parenting role is essential to achieving quality outcomes for children. Families have a significant influence on their child’s learning and development, and establishing relationships, exchanging information and providing support to families is an important role many services embrace.

Families and educators share the common goal of achieving the best outcomes for children. When they work together, families and educators can create consistent approaches and routines, and share insights and perspectives about each child. A collaborative approach also supports a child’s individuality and fosters a sense of belonging.

Quality Area 6 of the National Quality Standard (NQS) focuses on building meaningful relationships with families, which can, at times, be complex. It’s not always easy talking with busy families or establishing relationships with a diverse range of people. Sometimes it can feel like you’re making all the effort and families don’t want to be involved.

However, research and best practice tell us that understanding the individual context of your families – combined with determination and creativity – are key to forging and maintaining respectful, supportive relationships with them.

The Australia Education Research Organisation’s (AERO) family engagement webpage is a good place to start if you want to find out what research tells us about strong family-educator partnerships and their impact on educational outcomes.

Involving families in decision-making

Effective communication and being solutions-focused are key to building respectful, collaborative relationships with families. Families who feel valued and engaged are more likely to contribute meaningfully to decision-making in your service, including about their child’s learning and development.

To establish effective 2-way communication with families, it’s important to consider how you can support them to feel included and empowered to share their time and opinions with you. Be sensitive and responsive to families’ experiences, needs and perspectives. For example, asking families what their preferred mode and style of communication is may help those with diverse backgrounds and abilities feel heard, seen and valued. Also take the time to understand how your own beliefs and unconscious biases influence your practice and the way you engage with others.

If you are having trouble engaging with families, try a different approach. Consider the effectiveness of the methods you use to gather feedback about the program, children’s learning, the service and service decisions.

Perhaps families aren’t responding to online surveys. Have you tried hardcopy versions, direct invitations, casual conversations, personalised messages or developing focused questions for educators to ask them at drop-off times?

Sometimes you may assume no feedback means you are meeting everyone’s needs. However, how do you know your families don’t feel invisible?

To confidently meet elements 6.1.1 and 6.1.2, you need to do more than invite families to engage. Like all the other elements in the NQS, you are responsible for developing practices to ensure they do.

Supporting family wellbeing

Early Childhood Australia describes ECEC services as ‘soft entry’ support. That is, places where families can find out about health, early intervention and support services to help them navigate their parenting roles in a safe, familiar environment (element 6.1.3).

However, supporting families involves much more than providing some pamphlets at your sign-in table. Services that excel in this area think deeply about the specific needs of their children and families, developing relationships and providing resources that are genuine and meaningful to the people they support.

Designing family support involves looking at the context in which your service operates and developing or sharing targeted information and resources based on these insights. To learn more about the needs of your families:

• consult the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) to identify the vulnerabilities in your community
• use your enrolment process to help understand individual children and families’ histories, needs and experiences
• ask your families how they like to access information and, as a team, talk about how you can accommodate their needs and preferences.

Tips for developing collaborative partnerships with families

• When updating families about their child’s day, ask if they have any questions about their child’s learning or the way you do things.
• Celebrate children’s progress and achievement of goals with children and their families to let them know they are valued and you care.
• Consider diverse ways to collect feedback, knowledge and expertise from families. This could include background/information sheets, formal discussions at a mutually suitable time, informal discussions, online surveys, hardcopy questionnaires and social media.
• Learn about your community, including the demographics, facilities and available resources. Councils are often a good first point of call for this.
• Research the social and cultural norms of your families and the community your service supports.
• Organise professional learning for members of your team who would benefit from formal training in working with families, such as training in cultural competency, identifying biases, languages or having difficult conversations.
• Develop a formal communication plan to help you reflect on and document your communication with families.
• Connect with local organisations that offer family and parenting support. Learn more about the services they provide, as well as eligibility and participation requirements. Develop and maintain a list of these organisations, including their contact details, to share with families when providing a referral.
• Establish meaningful connections with community groups, businesses and events that share a commitment to supporting local children and families, such as local allied health services, playgroups, libraries and other ECEC services. Explore opportunities to collaborate or ways they can support families to extend their child’s learning outside of your service.