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To Become a Project Partner,
Click Here!
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To view the project
video:
The
Importance of Effective Parenting and Parenting
Education,
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Please allow a minute or two for the video to
download and
play.
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This is the initial issue of
the newsletter for the Project Partners of the
Uniting Los Angeles for Effective Parenting
Project, which is a five year (2008-2012)
community-led effective parenting initiative for
the residents of Los Angeles
County. |
(If you would
like to forward this newsletter
to family, friends or coworkers, go to
the end of the newsletter and click
"forward email' in blue on the left-hand
side.) |
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Project Overview and
Components |
The long term
goals of the Uniting Los Angeles for Effective
Parenting Project are (1) to enhance the overall
development and growth of children, and (2) to
prevent and treat the costly and often tragic
health, social and educational problems that
result from ineffective and uninformed parenting,
such as child abuse and neglect, school
underachievement and dropout, poor physical and
mental health, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse,
gangs and crime.
The project's
approach to achieving these long term goals is to
help more parents in Los Angeles County to be as
effective and humane as possible in carrying out
their child rearing responsibilities, and to do
this through providing or facilitating high
quality parenting education and support
services. As a result, the project's short
term and immediate goals are to make such services
more available, accessible and attractive. The
project does this by building upon, improving and
expanding the already existing parenting services
in LA County.
This is being
accomplished through the project's five
programmatic components, which are being phased in
as funding becomes available:
(1)
Public education campaigns about what is effective
parenting in the 21st century and the role of
parenting education,
(2) Training
and technical assistance workshops to help service
providing groups and schools to deliver the best
possible parenting education and support
services,
(3) Parenting
seminars, expositions and events to teach basic
parenting skills, and to showcase and stimulate
usage of the best parenting programs, services and
products,
(4) 24 hour, 7 day a week
telephone and Internet information, referral and
enrollment services to connect parents to the best
available programs, services, classes and
seminars, and
(5) An Effective
Parenting Council of Project Partners to provide
project governance, quality control and
coordination.
By the end of this five
year project it should be possible for every
parent to have a good idea about what is effective
parenting in the 21st century and to have more
positive attitudes about participating in
parenting education programs, classes and
seminars. Every parent should also become
aware of the best parenting education resources in
their communities and how to enroll and
participate. And more and more parents
should be taking advantage of these opportunities,
thereby increasing the number of parents who
enroll in and complete parenting classes and
seminars.
This increased
participation will lead to more parents using
effective parenting skills and strategies, and
thereby to achieving the project's long term goals
of enhanced child growth and development and the
prevention of the problems associated with
ineffective and uninformed parenting.
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Project
Partners
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The project is composed
of and operated by five categories of Project
Partners, led by the two founding partners, the Center
for the Improvement of Child Caring (CICC) and
the National
Effective Parenting Initiative (NEPI). The
Partners share responsibility for the project
through being part of the Effective Parenting
Council, which had its first meeting on July 17,
2008.
The five categories of
Partners, and those that have joined
by October 2008, are:
1. Parenting Service
Providing and Planning
Partners
211 Los
Angeles County
Alliance
for College-Ready Public Schools
Bassett
Unified School District
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July 2008 Effective
Parenting Council Meeting
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 The first
meeting of the Effective Parenting Council was
successfully conducted on July 17, 2008 at the
UCLA Faculty Center. The majority of the
Partners who had joined by that time were present
at that historic meeting (see list above)..
Also in attendance were several
agencies and groups who were invited to give them
a fuller opportunity to learn about the project,
with the intention of interesting them in becoming
Project Partners. That latter group included
representatives from the Los Angeles County
Sherriff's Department and the Department of
Children and Family Services, the Los Angeles
Unified School District Board of Education and
various district offices, Los Angeles City Council
members Jack Weiss and Bernard Parks, Los Angeles
County Supervisor Evonne B. Burke, the Mexican
American Legal Defense Fund, the Urban Education
Partnership, and the Bassett Unified School
District that had four representatives in
attendance, including the Superintendent and a
member of the Board of Education (Bassett has
recently become an official Project Partner).
Representatives from the Orange County Health
Department were also at this event, as their
county is in the midst of organizing its own
effective parenting initiative and were looking at
the project as a model they might want to
emulate.
All attendees
received a Project Binder that contained
information about the project and Partner
Responsibilities and Benefits; brochures about
CICC and NEPI; extensive information about and
descriptions of parenting programs; and position
papers on Defining Effective Parenting and The
Need for Telephone and Internet Effective
Parenting Services.
Included
with the Project Binders were copies of two of the
most important resource and background
publications for Project Partners, The Power
of Positive Parenting Guidebook and the book
version of that guide, The
Positive Parent: Raising Healthy, Happy and
Successful Children, Birth through Adolescence
(both written by CICC's founder and executive
director, Dr. Kerby T. Alvy). In addition, a
booklet was provided on why it is important to
avoid spanking children, Plain Talk about
Spanking, by Jordan Riak of Parents and Teachers
Against Violence. Brochures were made available
from a variety of local service proving
organizations, including the countywide human
services referral agency, Project Partner 211 Los
Angeles County.
Attendees also
were able to review many of the nations' best
known and respected parenting programs and
products in a display area in the meeting
room.
A special, 17 minute video was
created and shown, The Importance of Effective
Parenting and Parental Education. It
indicated how the project was the local embodiment
of a national effective parenting movement, and it
contained news coverage of parenting programs and
interviews with parenting authorities and
supportive public officials. (Click
here to view the video. Please allow a minute
or two for the video to download and
play.)
The project and its various
components were presented by several speakers,
including Drs. Alvy and Camilla Clarke, Liz
Herrera of El Nido Family Centers, Maribel Merin
of 211 Los Angeles County, and Don Schilling of
CICC.
In discussing the next steps
for the Effective Parenting Council, it was
decided that several committees needed to be
formed to support and carry out various project
activities and responsibilities. Several
participants volunteered to serve on an Executive
Committee that was charged with developing the
committee structure. They are to report back
to the Council members so that each Partner could
decide which committee that they would be most
helpful serving on.
Executive
Committee members who developed the committee
structure included Liz Herrera and Stuart Berton
from El Nido Family Centers, Mary Louise Silva
of the Alliance for College Ready Public
Schools, Matthew Smith representing Bassett
Unified School District, Martin Castro from the
Mexican American Opportunity Foundation, Ann
Brazil from Pausitive Programs, John Hurtado from
Council Member Richard Alatorre's office, Tommy
Andersen from Home Certain, and Dr. Alvy, Don
Schilling and Gary Oltman from CICC and
NEPI.
The fruits of their labors
include the Project Committees described below
which are herein being
announced. |
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Project
Committees |
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Training and Programs Committee
Its
responsibilities include...
(1) To be
knowledgeable about the best parenting programs
and resources in the nation,
(2) To
be knowledgeable about what parenting programs and
services currently exist in different community
sectors (the schools, child care centers,
community agencies, hospitals, religious
institutions, businesses, etc.),
(3)
To recommend which additional programs are needed
in the various sectors,
(4) To
facilitate training and technical assistance
workshops to prepare personnel from the various
sectors to deliver the additional programs and
services, and
(5) To facilitate the
evaluation of these training
events.
Advocacy
Committee
Its charge includes...
(1)
Developing a list of issues that the project will
want to advocate for. The list could include
the funding of more parenting services by state,
county and city government groups and by federated
funding agencies and foundations and corporations,
as well as advocating against any proposed cuts in
the funding of such services. It could also
include advocating for projects like the Uniting
Los Angeles for Effective Parenting Project in
other counties and cities, and/or advocating for a
federal government-supported Effective Parenting
Initiative,
(2) The prioritization of
which advocacy efforts to pursue now and in the
future, given the project's resources and what is
going on at the federal, state and local levels,
and
(3) Developing relations
with other local, state and national advocacy
groups who are interested in effective parenting
and parenting education, such as Prevent Child
Abuse America, America's Promise Alliance and the
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
Safe, Stable, Nurturing Relationships (SSNR)
program to prevent child
maltreatment.
Service Accessibility
Committee
Its focus is on developing and implementing
the two Parenting Information and Referral
Services to which the project is committed,
the telephone and Internet services to be called
Effective Parenting LA. The responsibilities
of this committee
include:
(1) Generating a
Parenting Program/Course Information Form for
schools, agencies and other providers of parenting
services to complete when they are preparing to
offer a parenting class, course, program or
service, and which they send to Effective
Parenting LA for inclusion in the countywide
database. A draft of such a form has already
been created by CICC and can be used as a model,
with additional information that may be
required.
(2) Generating
the software needed to receive and maintain a
database of parenting program and course
information.
(3)
Designing and testing a protocol on how to respond
on the telephone to parenting program request
calls.
(4) Developing an
appropriate staffing pattern for operating the
telephone service.
(5)
Developing and implementing an initial and ongoing
training program for staff of the telephone
service.
(6) Developing a
plan for utilizing the parenting program database
for a complementary online Effective Parenting LA
service, and
(7) Developing and
carrying out a plan for the initial and ongoing
funding of both the telephone and Internet formats
for this countywide Information and Referral
system.
Outreach
Committee
Its initial charge is...
(1)
To develop an overall Public Relations Plan for
the project, which includes both the individual,
grassroots approach and the mass media
approach,
(2) To
identify and invite publicity, advertising,
marketing and media experts to become Project
Partners and committee members,
and
(3) To generate publicity for
project events, such as parenting seminars,
and
(4) To plan and implement
Parenting Expos and Seminars in different
communities and countywide.
Fundraising and Awards
Committee
This Committee is to
(1)
Develop a list of potential grant funders for the
overall project and for the various project
components, including private sector funding
sources like foundations and corporations and
federated giving groups like the United Way and
the Brotherhood Crusade; quasi-government funding
sources like First 5 California and First 5 LA;
federal, and state and local government funding
sources,
(2) Prioritize which
funding sources grant proposals should be written
to, building on the proposals that have already
been developed and submitted on behalf of the
project by CICC and NEPI,
(3) Plan an
event for 2009 to bring foundation, corporate and
other potential funders together to discuss how to
approach them for funding of parenting education
programs and projects, patterned after the Funders
Forum that Project Partner Educate LA has been
sponsoring for the last few years, and
to
(4) Identify and/or develop other
means of generating project funding such as
through event sponsorships, Co-Op marketing, and
awards events like Parent of the Year
fundraisers.
Membership
Committee
The initial focus of this group will be on
recruiting more Project Partners in the five
Project Partner categories: (1) service providing
and planning partners, (2) service funding
partners, (3) publicity partners, (4) elected
official partners, and (5) child and family
product and services
partners.
Because there are other
above mentioned committees that have
responsibilities with different categories of
partners, the Membership Committee will work in
conjunction with these related
committees.
Once a sizable number of
partners per category are successfully recruited,
the Membership Committee will then focus on
recruiting Parent and Professional Members of the
National Effective Parenting
Initiative. |
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Project
Progress
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 In addition to
developing partnership relations with all of the
groups and individuals mentioned above and
conducting the July 17 Effective Parenting Council
meeting, the Project also has made significant
progress within its Training and Technical
Assistance component. The Project
successfully conducted parenting instructor
training workshops where over 30 instructors from
local agencies and schools were trained to deliver
new parenting services in their communities.
These project-sponsored workshops took place in
February and July of this year and they were to
learn to deliver the Los Ninos Bien Educados and
the Confident Parenting skill-building
programs.
The Los
Ninos Bien Educados Program workshop was led
by National Trainer of Instructors, Homero Tamez,
and was hosted by the Mexican American Opportunity
Foundation (MAOF) at their offices in
Montebello. The participants received a
complete Instructor's Kit and certification to
conduct this national model program with parents
of Latino American children in their local
communities. They represented a variety of
agencies and schools, including the MAOF, Para Los
Ninos, 211 LA County, Bienvenidos, and schools in
the Los Angeles Unified School
District.
The
Confident Parenting Program workshop was led
by National Trainer of Instructors Dr. Camilla
Clarke, and was hosted the Gay and Lesbian
Adolescent Social Services (GLASS) agency in Long
Beach. The participants of that workshop
also received a complete Instructor's Kit and
certification to lead the Confident Parenting
Program with the families served by their
agencies. Those trained included various
staff members of the Family Preservation Program
of GLASS, and staff from Shields for Families and
the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug
Dependency of South
Bay.
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First Parenting
Expo |
 The
Project's First Parenting Expo is currently under
development and is scheduled to take place on
November 15, 2008 at the headquarters of the
Mexican American Opportunity Foundation in
Montebello. Called "Learn to Be the Best Parent
You Can Be," this two-hour community event will
provide guidelines for effective parenting and
will teach several skills to help parents bring
out more positive behaviors in their
children. Community resources to further
educate parents will be shared.
The
workshop will be conducted in Spanish by Aidee
Bautista, a parenting specialist from MAOF.
Various community leaders and other parenting
experts will be in attendance.
This
Expo is being designed as a model that can be used
anywhere in the county and with any parenting
populations.
Every Project
Partner can host such events in their areas, and
more are being planned as this edition of the
newsletter is going to press.
To explore hosting such an event,
Project Partners can contact Don Schilling at
(818)
980-0903. |
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