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Strengthening Families

Safe Schools Resource

Strengthening Families

Grade Levels

1st Grade, 2nd Grade, Kindergarten, Pre-Kindergarten

Course, Subject

Family and Consumer Sciences, Balancing Family, Work, & Community Responsibility, Child Development
Related Academic Standards
11.2.3.F 11.2.3.F
Explain daily activities that fulfill family functions in meeting responsibilities (e.g., economic, emotional support, childcare and guidance, housekeeping, maintaining kinship, providing recreation).
11.4.3.B 11.4.3.B
Identify health and safety needs for children at each stage of child development.
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  • Big Ideas
    Children grow and learn in understandable observable patterns that can be recognized and optimized through consistent and stable family and community environments.
    Families are the fundamental unit of society; strong families empower individuals to manage the challenges of living and working in a diverse, global society.
    Awareness of self provides a foundation for an understanding of people and engagement in social, personal, and academic environments.
    Building and maintaining positive relationships is central to success in school and life.
    Personal, social, and academic success requires a belief in oneself, a sense of purpose, and optimism.
    Recognizing thoughts, feelings, and perspectives of self and others enables one to cooperate, communicate, and constructively interact with others.
    Self management and responsibility support participation in social, personal and academic environments.
  • Concepts
    Family members depend on one another to meet their needs and responsibilities.
    Health and safety needs of children change at each stage of development.
    Acting consistently within personal boundaries, rights, and privacy needs contributes to effective self management.
    Active listening enhances positive relationships
    Awareness of Personal Attitudes and Beliefs is critical to understanding oneself and how one adapts over time.
    Awareness of Personal Strengths and Interests provides a foundation for setting priorities, meeting needs, and addressing challenges.
    Communication skills are critical self-management tools in social, personal, and academic environments.
    Cooperation and collaboration are essential elements in working together constructively.
    Coping Skills are important in managing behavior in constructive ways.
    Coping skills are necessary for managing life events.
    Effective communication assists in an understanding of self and others.
    Emotions affect personal decisions and actions.
    Empathy / sympathy increase one’s ability to understand and appreciate differences.
    Establishment of short and long-term goals provides for purposeful actions towards achieving those goals.
    Expressing emotions, thoughts and feelings is essential in both intra- and interpersonal growth
    Identification of personal and social roles is the foundation for effective engagement.
    Knowledge of how interests, abilities, values, and personality relate to accomplishment of personal, social, educational, and career goals.
    Managing one’s emotions and impulses can impact the outcome of situations.
    Managing relationships supports both intra- and interpersonal development.
    Personal values, attitudes, and beliefs serve as a foundation for goal setting.
    Perspective frames how one interacts with others.
    Recognition of diversity serves to inform how one responds to and interacts with others.
  • Competencies
    Create a safety checklist. (e.g. classroom, home, neighborhood, playground)
    Demonstrate personal health and safety behaviors.
    Describe roles of family members.
    Describe ways families meet basic human needs.
    Explain the role of the family in socializing its members to be responsible family members and good citizens.
    Identify how contagious diseases can be spread.
    Identify safety hazards around the house.
    Identify the family as the basic unit of society.
    Demonstrate constructive ways to minimize impulsivity and deal with upsetting emotions.
    Demonstrate persistence and perseverance in acquiring knowledge and skills and responding to life events.
    Demonstrate the ability to convey one’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives using effective listening and speaking skills during social interactions.
    Demonstrate the ability to identify and assess verbal and nonverbal cues.
    Demonstrate the ability to prevent, manage, and resolve conflicts in constructive ways.
    Develop an action plan to set and achieve realistic goals.
    Establish connections with others of varying backgrounds or cultures.
    Exercise self-advocacy in the expression of one’s strengths and needs.
    Explain how personal strengths may inform personal preferences and needs.
    Explain the roles one plays within various contexts and the expected attitudes, beliefs, and actions associated with each.
    Identify alternative ways of achieving goals.
    Identify how personal attitudes and beliefs impact one’s behavior.
    Identify personal and social roles.
    Identify personal attitudes and beliefs.
    Identify personal strengths and interests.
    label, and express one’s emotions, thoughts, and feelings in varying situations.
    Make associations between one’s personal experiences and the experiences of others.
    Make the connection between how one feels and how one behaves.
    Monitor and adjust one’s behavior in order to play and work cooperatively.
    Recognize
    Recognize and appreciate individual and group similarities and differences.
    Recognize and name one’s emotions.
    Recognize different home, school, and community resources that support intrapersonal growth and development.
    Reflect and identify options and related consequences, both positive and negative, before expressing an emotion and/or taking action.
    Respond and adapt appropriately to personal and environmental cues
    Set short and long term goals.
    Understand causes of one’s feelings/emotions/behaviors.
    Use active listening skills as a means to identify the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others.
    Use social cues to inform the expression of one’s emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
    Utilize a realistic self-perception in the planning and monitoring of goals.

Description

Across the country, early care and education programs, child welfare departments, and others are using the Strengthening Families approach to build five Protective Factors in families: • Parental resilience • Social connections • Knowledge of parenting and child development • Concrete support in times of need • Children’s social and emotional development Research shows that these factors reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect by providing parents with what they need to parent effectively, even under stress. By building relationships with families, programs can recognize signs of stress and build families’ Protective Factors with timely, effective help. This breakthrough strategy for dealing with child neglect and abuse shows great promise because: • The Protective Factors have been demonstrated to work and are informed by extensive, rigorous research. • Activities that build the Protective Factors can be built into programs and systems that already exist in every state, such as early childhood education and child welfare, at little cost. • Strengthening Families has widespread support from social science researchers, state child welfare officials, early childhood practitioners, and policy experts. Currently, the Strengthening Families approach is being applied in 36 states. • Early childhood educators want to strengthen families: a National Association for the Education of Young Children survey shows that 97% want to do more to prevent maltreatment. Although Strengthening Families was developed in early care and education programs, partners in a large variety of settings working with many different populations are exploring ways to apply the approach.

Resource(s)

http://www.strengtheningfamilies.net/index.php/about/category/the_basics/
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