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Home > Promoting Healthy Families in Your Community: 2008 Resource Packet > Chapter 4: Engaging Your Community - Community Strategies
Promoting Healthy Families in Your Community : 2008 Resource Packet
Author(s): Child Welfare Information Gateway, Children's Bureau, FRIENDS National Resource Center For Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention
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| Year Published: 2008 |
Chapter 4: Engaging Your Community
Community Strategies
Organizations, groups, and tribal communities all can help raise awareness, strengthen families, and protect children. The following ideas offer some starting points for planning local community awareness activities. While some of these are specific to Child Abuse Prevention Month, most can be used at any time of year.
Involve local faith communities
Faith communities are an important source of social support and can often connect members in need with concrete supports in the community. In 2007, local children’s councils in several Iowa counties sent information packets, bulletin inserts, and table tents to area churches to help promote Child Abuse Prevention Month awareness efforts. Learn more on the Prevent Child Abuse Iowa website: www.pcaiowa.org/public_awareness.html
Other ideas for faith communities include:
- Organize a parenting fair to educate parents about support services in the community.
- Hold a Family Fun Day or Parent's Night Out.
- Host a parent education or self-help group.
- Provide a series of workshops on each of the protective factors and how they promote healthy families.
- Establish a resource library focusing on parenting issues.
- Create bulletin or newsletter inserts to highlight the five protective factors and suggest how members can promote them.
Involve men and fathers
Encourage fathers to be involved in their children's care right from the start. Here are some ideas:
- Encourage veteran dads to teach expectant fathers about newborns and how to nurture and care for their babies. For information about this type of program, visit Boot Camps for New Dads: www.bcnd.org
- Produce public service television and radio ads featuring fathers. The Alaska Children's Trust produced public service announcements with the tag line, "Listen, talk, play, and be a brain builder." Watch or listen to the ads: www.hss.state.ak.us/ocs/ChildrensTrust
Involve local schools
When parents become involved with their child's school, they develop social connections and learn more about their child's growth and development. Join schools in partnering with parents to foster protective factors that keep children safe and help them learn. For example:
- Hold a poster and essay contest for children in local schools. Find this and many other great ideas on the Prevent Child Abuse Illinois calendar of statewide events: www.preventchildabuseillinois.org/code/capm-info.html
- Sponsor an event with your school's parent-teacher group to introduce the protective factors and promote strengthening families.
Honor your community's culture
Parenting norms vary from culture to culture, so be sure your techniques for supporting families are relevant. For example:
- Offer classes that introduce traditional Native American child rearing practices as a means to help young Native American parents raise their children in a positive and culturally knowledgeable manner. For information about the Positive Indian Parenting Program, visit the National Indian Child Welfare Association website: www.nicwa.org/resources/catalog/curriculum/
- Coordinate ethnic street fairs to offer families a way to enjoy their cultural heritage in the company of others. Community organizations can provide prevention information and educational materials at booths and through family-friendly activities like parent-child art workshops and puppet shows.
Involve community agencies
Many agencies have missions that are aligned with preventing child abuse and neglect, and even address some of the same family-strengthening protective factors. For example:
- Provide parenting workshops and one-on-one mentoring to parents with disabilities. Abused Deaf Women's Advocacy Services in Seattle, Washington, offers a parenting program designed to increase deaf parents' responsive social support network: www.adwas.org/about/programs.html#Positive_Parenting
Celebrate parent leaders in your community
National Parent Leadership Month provides the opportunity for parents, agencies, and communities to come together to celebrate and honor the work of exemplary parent leaders in November. A National Parent Leadership Month toolkit is available from Parents Anonymous® to help communities develop activities and events to celebrate parents who provide leadership in promoting healthy families:
www.parentsanonymous.org/pahtml/NPLMonth.html
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Additional Ideas
Many communities use variations of the following popular activities to recognize Child Abuse Prevention Month and focus attention on supporting families to prevent the risk of abuse. Make one of these ideas your own:
- Historically, the blue ribbon has been an important symbol in the effort to prevent child abuse and neglect. Many communities host blue ribbon campaigns during Child Abuse Prevention Month, encouraging community members to wear the ribbon and recognizing "blue ribbon neighborhoods," "blue ribbon kids," or "blue ribbon families" for extraordinary efforts.
- Host an awards breakfast or luncheon to recognize key individuals and organizations working to strengthen families and prevent the risk of child abuse. Give awards in five categories, one for each protective factor.
- Disseminate calendars of daily family strengthening activities. Use local children's artwork to illustrate them. For an example, see http://www.childwelfare.gov/preventing/promoting/parenting/calendar.cfm
- Sponsor a Kids' Day at the Zoo. Make posters or hand out brochures that show how animal families nurture and protect their babies and how human families do the same or similar things.
- Advertise the opportunity to make a contribution to the State trust fund to honor a father, mother, or someone else special to the donor.
- Offer a conference on positive parenting and strengthening families. Have five workshop "tracks," one for each protective factor.
- Develop a community campaign to promote positive parenting. Consider a "Promises for Parents" campaign, like the one promoted by Prevent Child Abuse New York: http://preventchildabuseny.org/pdf/capmonth06.pdf
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This material may be freely reproduced and distributed. However, when doing so, please credit Child Welfare Information Gateway.
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