(a) Purpose. A program must integrate parent and family engagement strategies into all systems and program services to support family well-being and promote children's learning and development. Programs are encouraged to develop innovative multi-generation approaches that address prevalent needs of families across their program that may leverage community partnerships or other funding sources. This includes communicating with families in a format that meets the needs of each individual family.

(b) Family engagement approach. A program must:

(1) Recognize parents as their children's primary teachers and nurturers and implement intentional strategies to engage parents in their children's learning and development and support parent-child relationships, including specific strategies for father engagement;

(2) Develop relationships with parents and structure services to encourage trust and respectful, ongoing two-way communication between staff and parents to create welcoming program environments that incorporate the unique cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds of families in the program and community;

(3) Collaborate with families in a family partnership process that identifies needs, interests, strengths, goals, and services and resources that support family well-being, including family safety, health, and economic stability;

(4) Provide parents with opportunities to participate in the program as employees or volunteers;

(5) Conduct family engagement services in the family's preferred language, or through an interpreter, to the extent possible, and ensure families have the opportunity to share personal information in an environment in which they feel safe; and,

(6) Implement procedures for teachers, home visitors, and family support staff to share information with each other, as appropriate and consistent with the requirements in part 1303, subpart C, of this chapter; FERPA; or IDEA, to ensure coordinated family engagement strategies with children and families in the classroom, home, and community.

(a) A program must promote shared responsibility with parents for children's early learning and development, and implement family engagement strategies that are designed to foster parental confidence and skills in promoting children's learning and development. These strategies must include:

(1) Offering activities that support parent-child relationships and child development including language, dual language, literacy, and bi-literacy development as appropriate;

(2) Providing parents with information about the importance of their child's regular attendance, and partner with them, as necessary, to promote consistent attendance; and,

(3) For dual language learners, information and resources for parents about the benefits of bilingualism and biliteracy.

(b) A program must, at a minimum, offer opportunities for parents to participate in a research-based parenting curriculum that builds on parents' knowledge and offers parents the opportunity to practice parenting skills to promote children's learning and development. A program that chooses to make significant adaptations to the parenting curriculum to better meet the needs of one or more specific populations must work with an expert or experts to develop such adaptations.

(a) Family partnership process. A program must implement a family partnership process that includes a family partnership agreement and the activities described in this section to support family well-being, including family safety, health, and economic stability, to support child learning and development, to provide, if applicable, services and supports for children with disabilities, and to foster parental confidence and skills that promote the early learning and development of their children. The process must be initiated as early in the program year as possible and continue for as long as the family participates in the program, based on parent interest and need.

(b) Identification of family strengths and needs. A program must implement intake and family assessment procedures to identify family strengths and needs related to the family engagement outcomes as described in the Head Start Parent Family and Community Engagement Framework, including family well-being, parent-child relationships, families as lifelong educators, families as learners, family engagement in transitions, family connections to peers and the local community, and families as advocates and leaders.

(c) Individualized family partnership services. A program must offer individualized family partnership services that:

(1) Collaborate with families to identify interests, needs, and aspirations related to the family engagement outcomes described in paragraph (b) of this section;

(2) Help families achieve identified individualized family engagement outcomes; and

(3) Establish and implement a family partnership agreement process that is jointly developed and shared with parents in which staff and families review individual progress, revise goals, evaluate and track whether identified needs and goals are met, and adjust strategies on an ongoing basis, as necessary.

(d) Approaches to family partnership services. A program must:

(1) Ensure the family assignment process takes into account the varied interests, urgency, and intensity of identified family needs and goals.

(2) Ensure the planned number of families assigned to work with staff that conduct the family partnership process and work on family, health and community engagement services is no greater than 40:1. A program must maintain this ratio, except:

(i) When the responsible HHS official grants a waiver if the program can demonstrate staff competencies at § 1302.92(b)(5); program outcomes at paragraph (b) of this section; and reasonable staff workload as described in paragraph (d)(3) of this section.

(ii) During temporary periods of staff absence or attrition; changes in daily operations related to start-up or transitional activities; or extenuating circumstances related to emergency response and recovery.

(3) Ensure meaningful employee engagement practices address family services workload experiences, in accordance with § 1302.101(a)(2).

(e) Existing plans and community resources. In implementing this section, a program must take into consideration any existing plans for the family made with other community agencies and availability of other community resources to address family needs, strengths, and goals, in order to avoid duplication of effort.

(a) Community partnerships. (1) A program must establish ongoing collaborative relationships and partnerships with community organizations such as establishing joint agreements, procedures, or contracts and arranging for onsite delivery of services as appropriate, to facilitate access to community services that are responsive to children's and families' needs and family partnership goals, and community needs and resources, as determined by the community assessment.

(2) A program must establish necessary collaborative relationships and partnerships, with community organizations that may include:

(i) Health care providers, including child and adult mental health professionals, Medicaid managed care networks, dentists, other health professionals, nutritional service providers, providers of prenatal and postnatal support, and substance abuse treatment providers;

(ii) Individuals and agencies that provide services to children with disabilities and their families, elementary schools, state preschool providers, and providers of child care services;

(iii) Family preservation and support services and child protective services and any other agency to which child abuse must be reported under state or tribal law;

(iv) Educational and cultural institutions, such as libraries and museums, for both children and families;

(v) Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, nutrition assistance agencies, workforce development and training programs, adult or family literacy, adult education, and post-secondary education institutions, and agencies or financial institutions that provide asset-building education, products and services to enhance family financial stability and savings;

(vi) Housing assistance agencies and providers of support for children and families experiencing homelessness, including the local educational agency liaison designated under section 722(g)(1)(J)(ii) of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 11431 et seq.);

(vii) Domestic violence prevention and support providers; and,

(viii) Other organizations or businesses that may provide support and resources to families.

(b) Coordination with other programs and systems. A program must take an active role in promoting coordinated systems of comprehensive early childhood services to low-income children and families in their community through communication, cooperation, and the sharing of information among agencies and their community partners, while protecting the privacy of child records in accordance with subpart C of part 1303 of this chapter and applicable federal, state, local, and tribal laws.

(1) Memorandum of understanding. To support coordination between Head Start Preschool and publicly funded preschool programs, a program must enter into a memorandum of understanding with the appropriate local entity responsible for managing publicly funded preschool programs in the service area of the program, as described in section 642(e)(5) of the Act.

(2) Quality Rating and Improvement Systems. A program, with the exception of American Indian and Alaska Native programs, should participate in its State or local Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), to the extent practicable, if a State or local QRIS has a strategy to support Head Start participation without requiring programs to duplicate existing documentation from Office of Head Start oversight.

(3) Data systems. A program, with the exception of American Indian and Alaska Native programs unless they would like to and to the extent practicable, should integrate and share relevant data with state education data systems, to the extent practicable, if the program can receive similar support and benefits as other participating early childhood programs.

(4) American Indian and Alaska Native programs. An American Indian and Alaska Native program should determine whether or not it will participate in the systems described in paragraphs (b)(2) and (3) of this section.