Educare Family Advocate

Description

The Family Advocate has a primary role on Educare New Orleans interdisciplinary team for engaging and involving families of children at Educare through activities, practices and services that support parents as the primary nurturers, experts and teachers of their child in order to promote and sustain their child’s learning, development and academic and life success.

The Family Advocate has a specific and intentional role in the following three areas of work with families:

• Activities/strategies that promote and enhance the parent‑child relationship.
• Activities/strategies that engage parents in discussions about their child’s growth and development and provide parents information and opportunities to learn about concrete things they can do to promote their child’s learning.
• Activities/strategies that encourage parents’ involvement in the education of their child and in their child’s school both at Educare and in the K‑12 system. This includes helping parents recognize and expect “quality education;” know how to access quality elementary schools; and learn how to advocate for a quality education for their child.

The primary focus for the work of the Family Advocate is the parent/child relationship and to engage around that relationship at every opportunity with parents, and with other members of the Educare interdisciplinary team.

Full‑time

• Develop and sustain collaborative relationships with an assigned caseload of families and serve as their primary point of contact on behalf of their child’s and their own involvement in Educare. Utilize all informal and formal opportunities to build and maintain the relationships.
• Collaborate with the Educare interdisciplinary team to promote families’ understanding and management of their child’s behaviors, including positive approaches to discipline, as well as management of their own emotional responses.
• Lead work with families to identify child and family strengths and areas of need, i.e., the Family Assessment, and to develop goals to promote and enhance the three goals of Family Support as part of the Family Partnership Agreement process.

• Access and disseminate resources for families that pertain to children’s healthy growth and development.
• Contribute to the planning and facilitation of classroom family meetings, parent education activities, and family home activities that focus on child development and support the classroom learning activities.
• Implement protocols to follow up on absenteeism (including excessive tardiness) in order to identify and address barriers to children’s regular attendance.
• Support and assist families in addressing their own emotional, physical, educational, and employment needs in order to support their child’s development.

• Participate in the recruitment, enrollment, and orientation of families entering Educare.
• Communicate the Educare model to parents during recruitment, enrollment, & shared governance platforms.
• Develop strategies with families that help them appreciate and contribute to the educational activities of Educare and successfully use their own voices to advocate on behalf of their children and themselves. Promote parents’ overall participation in program governance.
• In collaboration with the Director of Family Engagement and Educare School Director, facilitate parent meetings/cohorts.
• Provide parents of children who have disabilities and/or behavioral concerns with information about special education procedural safeguards and due process rights.
• Mentor parents of children who have disabilities and/or behavioral concerns in building relationships and developing effective communication skills within the education system.
• Develop working relationships with local schools to help coordinate the successful transition of children and families from Educare to their next quality school of choice.
• In collaboration with fiscal clerks/staff, support families to initiate and…