California Head Start and Family Development Trainings
In Partnership with the National Family Development Credential Program, Connecticut Children's
Medical Center and Center for the Study of Culture, Health and Human Development, University of Connecticut
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The Family Development Credential Program is a professional development and credentialing program that provides frontline family workers with the knowledge and skills they need to coach families to set and reach their own goals for healthy self-reliance in their communities. The program focuses on a strength-based partnership approach that develops workers both professionally and personally.
The Program was developed by Cornell University’s Department of Human Development. Since its inception, it has been adopted by 18 other states. In the state of California, the California Head Start Association has taken on the role of State Coordinator. As part of the Family Development Credential coordination, CHSA is available to provide FDC trainings, facilitation of the FDC college course, portfolio advising, and assistance in obtaining the necessary FDC credential from the University of Connecticut once participants have taken the course. For more information, please contact the CHSA office.
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Family development is based on the following core principles
Families and family development workers are equally important partners in this process, with each contributing important knowledge. Workers learn as much as the families from the process.
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All people and all families have strengths. |
All families need and deserve support. How much and what kind of support varies throughout life. |
Families must choose their own goals and methods of achieving them. Family development workers’ roles include helping families set reachable goals for their own self-reliance, providing access to services needed to reach these goals, and offering encouragement.
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Most successful families are not dependent on long-term public support. They maintain a healthy interdependence with extended family, friends, other people, spiritual organizations, cultural and community groups, schools and agencies, and the natural environment.
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| Services are provided so families can reach their goals, and are not themselves a measure of success. New methods of evaluating agency effectiveness are needed to measure family and community outcomes, not just the number of services provided. |
Diversity (race, ethnicity, gender, class, family form, religion, physical and mental ability, age, sexual orientation) is an important reality in our society, and is valuable. Family workers need to understand oppression in order to learn to work skillfully with families from all cultures.
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| For families to move out of dependency, helping systems must shift from a “power over” to a “shared power” paradigm. Human service workers have power (which they may not recognize) because they decide who gets valued resources. Workers can use that power to work with families rather than use power over them. |
Families need coordinated services in which all the agencies they work with use a similar approach. Collaboration at the local, state, and federal levels is crucial to effective family development.
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Changing from the deficit model to the family development approach requires a whole new way of thinking, not simply more new programs. Individual workers cannot make this shift without corresponding policy changes at agency, state, and federal levels.
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The deficit approach, which requires families to show what is wrong in order to receive services, is counterproductive to helping families move toward self-reliance. |
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MISSION
STATEMENT
The California
Head Start
Association is the
unified voice
providing
leadership and
advocacy for the
Head Start
community.
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VISION
STATEMENT
The California
Head Start
Association will
be an important
strategic partner
representing Head
Start interests in
California and the
nation. |
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