Family Support Staff: Examining their Approach to Supporting Families

• In Event: 2-211 - It Takes a Village: Exploring the Antecedents, Outcomes and Patterns of Family Engagement in ECE

Integrative Statement

Ample evidence exists about the importance of parents and parenting in supporting children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development (NASEM, 2016). Parents and parenting are critically important in the early years, especially for children who are placed at risk, primarily due to poverty. Recent evidence from home visiting programs shows that parents can be supported to reduce children’s toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences (Sama-Miller, 2017). Some of the outcomes of these home visiting programs include positive parenting and reductions in child maltreatment. While attention has focused on homes and parents, there has been limited focus on family support staff who work in centers. The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which family support characteristics and behaviors are associated with parental practice.

Method
The sample for this study includes a total of 5,977 parents with children enrolled in Educare, a high quality early education program, during the 2010-2017 school years. Family Support Staff (N=377; FSS) completed the depression scale (RAND, n.d.) and Job Stress Inventory (JSI; Curbow et al., 2000). They also completed information about their years of experience and education. Parents completed the Strengths-Based Practices Inventory (SBPI; Green, et al., 2004) to assess the extent to which parents reported Educare staff: (a) identify and use parental strengths, (b) are culturally competent, (c) have interpersonal sensitivity and knowledge, and (d) engage in relationship-supportive behaviors.

Results
Correlation analyses indicate that FSS characteristics were related to their functioning (see Table 1): more education was related to less depression and more stress; more years of experience was related to more depression and less stress. More job stress, however, was negatively related to parents’ report of staff’s use of strengths-based practices.

Regression analyses controlling for site showed that characteristics of FSS were related to parent-reported SBPI scores (see Table 2): years of education was positively associated with SBPI (B = .05, p<.05) and FSS functioning also mattered: FSS’ job stress (B = -.12, p< .001) was negatively associated with parents’ report of staff’s use of strengths-based practices.

Discussion
These preliminary findings show that more attention is needed about FSS and how their experiences and behaviors are associated with their interactions with families, especially families with multiple challenges, particularly due to poverty. This is important as FSS are likely the only consistent individuals at the program level connected with families throughout their time in Educare, which could be up to five years. Similar to what we have seen with how teachers’ characteristics and functioning are related to children’s learning, we see that FSS’ characteristics and functioning may play a key role in parenting practices. Additional analyses will examine other aspects of FSS (e.g., job resources) and parenting practices (e.g., parent-child relationship, parental depression and stress), and potential implications for supporting parents.

Authors

• Iheoma U Iruka, HighScope Educational Research Foundation
  Presenting Author

• Laura Kuhn, FPG, UNC-Chapel Hill
  Non-Presenting Author

• Noreen Yazejian, UNC Chapel Hill, FPG Child Development Institute
  Non-Presenting Author