EU-US Dialogue about Standards
| From: | Ruth Ettenberg Freeman |
| To: | Mary Crowley |
| Sent: | Tuesday, August 08, 2006 |
| Subject: | Parenting Education Guidelines |
| Attachments: |  A description of CT-PEN (69kb) Our invitation to Connecticut parenting educators to join our Credentials Task Force (43kb) Information about me as an independent parenting educator (95kb) |
Hello Ms. Crowley,
Kim Sullivan from Boston gave me your contact information and I hope that you don't mind our getting in touch. I am a founding member and now working as a very part time coordinator for the Connecticut Parenting Education Network (CT-PEN). We are a professional organization of parenting educators but have very limited funding so most of what we do is through the voluntary work of our members.
We have a small grant that is funding an effort to learn about credentials and licenses in other states so that we can consider whether it makes sense to pursue such a thing for parenting educators here in Connecticut. As members of our National Parenting Education Network (NPEN), we will be contacting those states who have certificates or credentials or licenses and interviewing them about their process, lessons learned and outcomes from these efforts. We hope to produce a summary report of our findings and will share that with members of CT-PEN and others who are interested.
Kim said that the UK has a set of guidelines for parenting educators and if that is the case, we would be enormously grateful if you can share that information with us. I will be happy to send along to you our summary report if it is indeed completed. If you have a phone number where we might talk by phone for a short time, that would probably be helpful or we can communicate through email if that works better for you.
You probably already know about these, but our National University Extension system developed what is called the National Parenting Education Model (NEPEM) which outlines in six categories the basic skills and capacities parents need to be effective. Based on that model, they also developed the National Extension Parenting Education Framework (NEPEF) which describes essential skills and capacities needed to be effective parenting educators. We will also be looking at that document as we consider possibilities here in Connecticut.
For your information, I am attaching some documents:
- A description of CT-PEN (69kb)
- Our invitation to Connecticut parenting educators to join our Credentials Task Force (43kb)
- Information about me as an independent parenting educator (95kb)
Hope these help orient you to our efforts and to me as an individual practitioner. Thanks for considering this request.
Ruth Ettenberg Freeman, LCSW
Positive Parenting for peace at home and success in school
Parenting education and consultation
Phone: 860 429-4477
| From: | Mary Crowley |
| To: | Ruth Ettenberg Freeman |
| Sent: | Tuesday, August 15, 2006 |
| Subject: | Quality assurance for work with parents |
| Attachments: | Research into Qualification Needs for Work with Parents (527kb) Qualities of Helpful Parenting Discussion Document (295kb) Parenting UK (formerly known as the Parenting Education & Support Forum) Model Curriculum Summary (36kb) National Parenting Academy Core Brief – Summary of Expert Panel Views (42kb) |
Dear Ruth Ettenberg Freeman
I was delighted to hear from you and to know about the exciting project you are embarking on to develop standards for work with parents.
When we were first set up ten years ago and were a very small organisation, (we are not huge now!) we convened a Working Group to consider how to quality assure work with parents because it was becoming increasingly popular here and we were concerned that opportunists would see it as a money-making racket.
The working group took a while to come up with a core curriculum listing the knowledge and skills which it considered essential for all who work with parents around the parenting role. I attach the one-aage summary; the full 40-page version is on our website www.parentinguk.org. This was the first step. We then decided on the National Occupational Standards model of quality assurance because it has the merit of being accepted across the UK and of being presented in modular form with the possibility of completing training or having work-based accreditation based on observation of good practice for separate modules of skills and knowledge. This was important because many come into this area of work from work with children, playwork, working with offenders, couple counselling, or other related (or vaguely related) areas and it is wasteful for people to repeat learning they have already done.
It took several years and UK wide consultation to develop the Standards but they were finally approved by the UK Approvals Board in April 2005 and launched across the UK in the autumn of that year. they are also on our web site but it may be better to wait till next week to download because the new revised version complete with values and principles will be posted then. And I am sending you a hard copy and a CD by mail.
The next stage was to develop a qualifications framework to support the Standards. We commisioned a survey of qualification needs - I attach the finished report. As you will see, there is a patchy supply of qualifications available here from universities and other awarding bodies. They are more or less all listed in the Appendix to the report.
The need is for qualification at a wide variety of levels from pre-university to doctorate.
There is an enormous expansion in demand for work with parents here at present, fuelled by the England government policy for extensive work iwth parents of early years children and what is called the Respect Agenda, which aims to tackle anti-social behaviour by young people and neighbourhood concerns. In addition, all schools in England (23,000) by 2010 will be obliged to offer support for parenting.
The policies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are not yet at this all-encompassing stage.
We are also experiencing a deluge of TV based parenting programmes, which we are clear also need to conform to National Occupational Standards. We conducted a survey of parents some years ago and one of their main concerns was how would they distinguish reliable advice and information on web sites, so it is clear that these sites would do well to seek to work to the NOS. (though frankly policing them would be tricky; it would have to come from a desire to be seen as meeting the Standards)
The government in England is responding to this high level of need by proposing to establish a new National Parenting Academy with a role to provide quality assurance and training. We shall of course be applying to be the Academy! I attach a short paper explaining what the hope is for this new body.
I am sure this short email will raise as many questions as it answers, but we will be pleased to provide more information or our views in any way that may be helpful to your work.
I am also attaching, just for interest, a short discussion document which we produced a couple of years ago after we asked ourselves "Standards for what kind of parenting?" We welcome comments.
I notice that you are a membership organisation. We are also. I wonder if it would be worthwhile to offer each other free reciprocal membership which avoids that tiresome problem of paying of money overseas? If you provide me with a snail-mail address, I shall add you to our mailing list for our two-monthly mailing of the news bulletin and other material, unless you would prefer not.
I look forward to hearing about the progress of your work and hope you will not hesitate to ask for anything we can offer that may be useful. I would welcome a phone conversation as you suggest. My office number is (+) 44 207 284 8380; it is probably a good idea to arrange a time, since I am out a lot - for obvious reasons!
With best wishes
Yours sincerely
Mary
Mary Crowley MBE
Chief Executive
Parenting UK
Unit 431 Highgate Studios
53-79 Highgate Road
London NW5 1TL
www.parentinguk-org
www.parenthood.org.uk
www.europarent.org
(00) 44 207 284 8380
(+) 44 7956 38 2020
| From: | Ruth Ettenberg Freeman |
| To: | Mary Crowley |
| Sent: | Tuesday, August 15, 2006 |
| Subject: | RE: Quality assurance for work with parents |
Mary - thank you so much for your rich and detailed response to our request. This is wonderful. I need to put it aside as a juggle a few other tasks. The first meeting of our group will be August 31st and I will be sharing your information with everyone. I will be in touch soon. And I will also check with our Leadership Team to make sure that its ok to include you in our CT-PEN group. We are mostly an email entity and almost never actually use the regular mail system. It would be great to be included in your group in any way that I can.
Also, please let me know if I may forward your message to the National Parenting Education Network. I think there are folks at the national level who will be interested if they don't already know you.
Thanks so much! (And please, if you are ever in the state, feel free to give us a call. We live two hours from Boston and about three hours from NYC where I grew up. We love international guests and we are just 10 minutes from the main campus of the University of Connecticut.)
Kindest regards -
Ruth Ettenberg Freeman, LCSW
Positive Parenting for peace at home and success in school
Parenting education and consultation
Phone: 860 429-4477
Anyone wishing to comment on this dialogue is very welcome to. Please visit the forum and let us know what you think about this, or indeed anything else on the Europarent website. We'd be delighted to read your views and comments.
A Report from a conference at Wheelock College Boston Massachusetts by Families First America
Summary and Action Steps - Charting the progress & Promise of Parenting Education
