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Finding Your Way 2010

Finding Your Way 2010 Logo and TitleTuesday, October 19, 2010 • Heidel House Resort, Green Lake

The third annual Finding Your Way forum, Finding Your Way: Focus on Family Engagement, was developed by the Wisconsin Head Start Association (WHSA), the WI Head Start State Collaboration Office (HSSCO), the Supporting Families Together Association (SFTA), and the WI Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to engage leaders of Head Start, Early Head Start, Child Care Resource & Referral (CCR&R), and parents in discussion about how to:

  1. Close the gap in engaging families across systems;
  2. Build a shared language, framework, and standards to supporting families;
  3. Collaboratively design services across systems;
  4. Best enhance the quality of family services among partners; and
  5. Create services and systems of planned support for true parent and family empowerment.

Finding Your Way: Focus on Family Engagement provided an opportunity for:

  • Family service providers to increase their understanding of Strengthening Families content and resources.
  • Communities to develop or build on existing “Change Teams” to help implement Strengthening Families or other pressing initiatives locally.
  • Participants to jointly identify ways to engage families in true partnership across providers in a collaborative setting.
  • Individuals and organizations to learn how to engage families with higher levels of intentionality and collaborative design.
  • Participants to discuss and define the local, state, and federal contexts in which family engagement is becoming such a vibrant topic.

Featured content included:

  • Strengthening Families through Protective Factors Training by Nancy Meyers, Director of Child Care Services at Family Resources in La Crosse.  Participants explored how to shift the focus on families away from risk and deficits to family strengths and resiliency.
  • A luncheon panel presentation providing local perspectives on the implementation of the Strengthening Families Model and Parent Cafes from Shari Rather, Waukesha County Health & Human Services Foster Care Coordinator, and Peggy Hibbard, Senior Family Services Specialist at the Centers for Learning Excellence Head Start & Early Head Start, and on school and on school district, public library, and early childhood partnerships around parent and family engagement from Jan Berg, DeForest Library Director at the DeForest Area Public Library.
  • Change Leadership Training from Tom Mosgaller, Director of Change Management at the NIATx Division of the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Support at UW-Madison’s College of Engineering.  Individual leaders and leadership teams prepared to engage in meaningful community and organizational change.