This course builds on the basic communication practices examined in the CONNECT course Communication for Collaboration. Building Powerful Family Partnerships extends communication to partnership-oriented practices designed to promote trusting partnerships with families. Similar to basic communication skills, partnership-oriented practices require ongoing practice, reflection, and feedback to improve effectiveness in developing trusting partnerships with families.  *You have 90 days from the time you begin the course to complete it.
 
Course objectives
At the end of this course, learners will be able to:                              

• Describe effective practices for developing trusting family-professional partnerships in early care and education programs; and
• Use a decision-making process to select partnership-oriented practices linked to:
  • developing an initial friendly relationship,
  • making shared decisions, and
  • developing a trusting partnership with families to address challenging issues.

This course also aligns with the following 2014 DEC Recommended Practices:

• F1. Practitioners build trusting and respectful partnerships with the family through interactions that are sensitive and responsive to cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic diversity.
• F3. Practitioners are responsive to the family’s concerns, priorities, and changing life circumstances.
• F5. Practitioners support family functioning, promote family confidence and competence, and strengthen family-child relationships by acting in ways that recognize and build on family strengths and capacities.
• F6. Practitioners engage the family in opportunities that support and strengthen parenting knowledge and skills and parenting competence and confidence in ways that are flexible, individualized, and tailored to the family’s preferences.

This is a 2.5 hour course worth .25 CEUs.

CEUs are approved by the Friday Center for Continuing Education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. This course has also been approved for early childhood state training hours in the following states: Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Utah. Early intervention credits (i.e., 2 credits) have also been approved by the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities.