Enhancing Professional Development for Home Visitors

Enhancing Professional Development for Home Visitors

Randi Hopper: Hello everyone, and thank you for joining today's webinar on "Enhancing Professional Development for Home Visitors." My name is Randi Hopper, and I'm a senior training and technical assistance specialist with the National Center on Early Childhood Development, Teaching, and Learning.

Today, I'm so excited to be joined by Brandi Black Thacker, the director of Training, Technical Assistance, and Collaboration with the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement to share this information with you today. Before we get started, we are going to go over some of the features that we're going to be using to help us interact today. At the bottom of your screen, you'll notice that there are widgets. If you have any questions during the webcast, you can submit them through the purple Q&A widget. We will try to answer these questions throughout the webcast.

Please know that we do capture all these questions, and if you have any technical questions, please enter them in here as well. A copy of today's slide deck, and additional resources, are available in the resource list which is the green widget. We encourage you to download any of the resources and links that may be helpful today. We are going to be using some of these as activities, so you definitely want to check them out. And throughout the session, we may be using the yellow and orange idea widgets to engage with today. You can also find additional answers to some common technical questions located in the yellow help widget at the bottom of your screen.

You can also find closed captioning widget in both English and Spanish. Each of these widgets are resizable and movable for a customized experience. So, you simply click on the widget, move it, drag it, and drop it, and resize using the arrows on the top corners. So finally, if you have any trouble, refresh your browser using F5. Be sure to log off your VPN and exit out of any other browsers. That tends to kind of slow it down a little bit. Alright. First, we're going to get in here by taking a look at our session objectives. So today, we're really going to take a look at the knowledge, skills, and practices that we need for positive outcomes, explore professional develop—development opportunities that are going to help improve home-visiting practices, and review key resources that are available to you to support your work.

Alright. So, before we begin, I want you to take a moment to reflect. Think about the most effective professional development experience that you have had so far. Keep that in mind as we move forward. So, you have quite a little bit of time to think about this, and we're going to circle back to this after—after a little bit. We're going to take a look first at the role of the home visitor in promoting parent and child outcomes. Knowing the role of the home visitor helps us to make professional development efficient for ourselves and the staff that we supervise. Some of you have seen this slide in previous webinars, and here is where we see the difference between the work of a teacher in a center-based program and the work of a home visitor at a home-based program. In home-based programs, we are standing alongside parents, promoting their relationship with their child and helping them provide high-quality learning experiences in the home.

You'll see as part of our resource list that we've provided a handout about positive parent-child relationships. It'll be a good one to check out following the webinar. This visual here helps us to ground our conversation on identifying the professional development of home visitors. Knowing the goal of implementing effective home visiting practices that support parents in developing their positive parenting practices, which in turn then promote healthier child development, gives us a lens through which to look at what skills, experiences, and professional development are appropriate for home visitors. A home visitor travels from home to home to work individually with each family, collaborating with parents to facilitate family support for their children's development in the home environment during everyday activities, consistent with family values, strength, and goals.

That's a lot to do in one home visit, right? And so, every home is different. Every family is different, and so the home visitor needs to be able to respond and support each one. So, a home visitor could visit a family that has recently moved to the United States from another country in the morning, a family of dual language learners after lunch, and a family with a child with disabilities in the late afternoon. These are the most effective home visiting practices identified from a metadata analysis of multiple evaluations that have shown four key home visiting practices which effectively increase parents' developmental support for their children. So, you'll see the four here, one in each pie.

So, establishing a positive relationship, responding to strengths and culture, facilitating the parent-child interactions, and sustaining a collaborative relationship. You'll notice that each of these home—key home visiting practices supports the purpose of the home-based program which is to promote that parent-child relationship and support the parents as they facilitate the learning opportunities for their children. So next, we're going to put up a poll about asking about the strategies that your program needs to support home-based staff to gain or enhance their home visiting practices. So, the poll is going to pop up on your screen, and you're going to have a minute to select two strategies that are most used within your program. So, you'll see that ...

So, make sure you pick the top two out of in-person training provided by your program, conferences and/or institutes, virtual training, individual coaching, peer coaching, group coaching, continued education provided by the program, and continued education obtained by staff, as well as reflective supervision. So, make sure to select the two that your program uses most often, and then as soon as our minute is up, we will shift to be able to see all of the answers that we have for our group today.

Alright. That's been our minute, and as people still answer, we're going to take a quick look. Here is our results, and you'll see that quite a big chunk of people do get their ... Get their strategies from ... Do use the strategy of in-person training with our next highest one looking like individual coaching, kind of a tie between individual coaching and reflective supervision. So now, we're going to move forward to talk about some professional development opportunities for home visitors that really enhance their practice, development, and improvement over time. So, you'll see here that we're taking a look at the Head Start Performance Standards and how they align with what research tells us are effective professional development opportunities. So, on the left, you'll see that we have some key professional development strategies that are identified. These are from a 2016 OPRE report that was focused on professional development and the improvement of quality services.

And on the right, you'll see the corresponding Head Start Program Performance Standards. So, as we move through the webinar, we're going to explore each of these strategies. So, our first being that there are many different ways to identify professional needs, and one way is by looking at the knowledge, skills, and practices that the home-visiting workforce already possess. So, when we think about this when we begin our home-visiting work, what are those ... You know, what were those knowledge, skills, and practices that you already had when you started out working in the field, right?

And then, when we think along the way, what did we learn? What did we learn intentionally through things like those in-person trainings? And what were those unintentional things that we learned, whether we learned them along the way of how to engage with parents just by our exposure to different families or how to best get our paperwork done by looking and seeing what our peers were doing?

One way to identify is to look at the staff qualifications data. So here, you'll see that we look at the national data for staff qualification. With this, we know that as of Aug. 1, 2018, all home visitors in the home-based program must have a minimum of a home-based CDA or a comparable credential, or equivalent coursework and demonstrate competency, plan, and implement home visits. So, as we see in the 2019 PIR data which we see on the screen, we see that home visitors, 46% of them already have bachelor degrees, and a high number of supervisors, 29%, already have advances degrees.

So, this information tells us that we have a highly-educated workforce already out there providing these home-based services. When we start looking very specifically at the degrees themselves, this is one snapshot that you see here focused on the degrees that are in early childhood education. So, you see that across the board, this is just for the home visitor section, is that we already see there's quite a chunk of the home-visiting workforce that has a degree in early childhood education. The next highest degree, look at human services at 9%, psychology at 6%, social work at 5%, and nursing at 1%, when we look at just the bachelor-degree level. So, this is where we're going to take a look at one of our resources.

So, in your resource list, there's a handout that is titled, "What training is needed?" You're going to use this as a reference. So, this is where we're going to use our yellow idea widget. Kind of looks like a light bulb, and you'll find it at the bottom of your screen. This is going to let you add and share amongst everybody who is participating in our webinar today to add additional ideas about training topics that you think are absolutely needed for home visitors.

Now, we're going to show slides on the two pieces of information that are on your handout, but you can continue to add as we move forward with that idea widget open. You can continue to add those potential things, and then what we're going to do is we're going to take that list after the webinar and post it onto MyPeers to see what the other members of our community would really like to share with us.

So, one piece where we take a look at some training ideas and topics is from the Council of Unprofessional Recognition. The goal of this council is to meet the growing needs of qualified early care and education staff, and they are the ones that administer the child development associate, the CDA, National Credentialing Program. So, the council also has a credential and certification process for the home visitors, so we mentioned that home visitor CDA before which is now the requirement.

So, you'll also find a handout for the CDA in the resource list as well. So, the topics that you see on this slide are the content that's required by the council to cover the course content portion of the credential process. So, planning on a different way to meet the competency requirement, knowing that these competencies are there is a good guideline to help with areas that might be good to share with home visitors. In addition to the council's requirement, you also take a look at online professional development systems that home visitors might participate in. For example, the Institute for the Advancement of Family Support Professionals has online modules that are out there that cover a variety of topics that are all relevant to home visitors.

Some of the offerings from the institute are covered in the handout, and you can also see that this is a time where you can compare what is out there for the CDA, what's in these modules, and then this is where you can use that idea widget to then say—say additional and add additional topics that you feel would be relevant. So, I'm really excited after the webinar to take a look at your lists to see everything that's on it. So, our next professional development strategy that we're going to focus on is being active and engaged learning. So, offering these opportunities that are really engaging.

So, once needs and topic areas of interests are identified, the attention really shifts to how the content is delivered. So, engaging in active learners generally have increased participation in professional opportunities, and they're more likely to try new ideas in their work with families. So, content should focus on learning about theory and research, as well as practical application that is relevant to the audience. So, online and flexible professional development opportunity such as the institute's online modules, those courses offered in IPD on the, on the ECLKC as well as webinars like this allow participants to engage in learning and then also, because we have these recorded, you're able to access them when your schedule allows. So, when we talk about active and engaging learning, we really want content to be designed to address all learner modality.

So, for online learning, different modality types are addressed through the use of graphs, graphics, and videos for those that are visual learners; video clips, and interviews; or podcasts for auditory learners; and also downloadable, fillable handouts for opportunities to directly—or opportunity to directly type in answers for those kinesthetic learners. The delivery of the content should really balance new material with hands-on activity that really help learners to put knowledge into practice. Those online modules that encourage knowledge acquisition include opportunities for practice of new skills connected to the learning objective. Many times, you can see them chunked out to be able to then have kind of a digestible piece there. Now we're going to take a look ... I've had ...

Oh, I do see a question asking about the online website, and that is for the Institute For the Advancement of Professionals, and the link to it is actually in our resource handout that's in our resource link. So, don't worry. It's there. And also, our requirements for educational requirements, and so that's where we really want to take a look back at the Head Start Performance Standards under our—where we take a look at ... I would need to pull up the exact number because it's not coming to my head right now, but under the staff qualification and competency. So, I will look up that, and I will put it out there to answer that question specifically for sure.

Alright. So, here is a poll where we're going to think and reflect back on that question that we started with and be able to answer ... Pick any that apply. Why was that professional development experience so engaging for you? Why was it so effective? Were you more interested in the topic? Was it brand-new to you? Was it the training format, the presenter, the activities that were used, the opportunities for discussion and sharing, the resources shared, or was there follow up to the training that you really enjoyed? Alright. So, we're seeing ... Getting a lot of answers, so as soon as our time is up, I'll push those responses forward.

Alright. I'm going to push it out to the audience so that all of you can see it. And we'll see that a great portion of it that made it really effective for you was because you were interested in the topic. So, this shows us that it's really key for us to be able to have some staff input when it comes to choosing training topics because when they're not interested, it may not be as effective for them. So, we're going to push forward a little bit, and we're going to talk about opportunities to practice skills. So, this strategy, really we want training and learning to intersect with coaching and reflective supervision.

We want these opportunities for training to really have an opportunity to practice, and this could be role-play, observation, and feedback. But it also goes into, how do we follow up with that training and provide things in an ongoing sense? Reflective supervision is really good to be able to provide regular insight and feedback for supervisors and supervisees to have a back-and-forth about what really works for them and what they're interested in. So, in addition to looking at the knowledge in education, we want to look at how this translates into practice. So, we want to assess the skills and abilities that home visitors already have, and many times, we use observation tools for this.

And so, you'll see a partial listing of assessment tools that were from a home visiting brief which is called Design Options for Home Visiting Evaluation for 2012, and it did note these different observation tools that were—that were used in the brief to evaluate. You'll notice that there is a double asterisk for the home visiting skill profile. We included that one because we hear that it's used quite a bit, but it was not included in the study itself. So, we made sure to put that out there. So, thinking about observation and how we can put these into practice, we're actually going to watch a short video with a home visitor, a parent, and a child on a home visit. And so, I want you to pay close attention to the strength of the home visitor and any areas you think need improvement.

[Video begins]

Woman No. 1: Look! Look! It's the seam!

Woman No. 2: Look! Look! This one. This one. You got it just right.

Woman No. 1: Almost got it. Keep trying.

Woman No. 2: Yay!

Woman No. 1: Yay! [Indistinct conversation]

Woman No. 2: What's that one? Two, three! You got it? She's determined to get that one in, huh? It's a triangle!

Woman No. 2: OK, grab it. Let's try it. Oh!

Woman No. 1: See? This triangle has one, two, three sides.

Woman No. 2: It's like a—

Woman No. 1: You're trying, huh? Want to try this one?

Child: Uh-uh.

Woman No. 1: Nuh-uh?

Woman No. 2: How about that one? Oh, this one. This one? KK. Kylie, try that one.

Woman No. 1: So, that's four sides. No, you want to try.

Woman No. 2: That seems ...

[Video ends]

Randi: So, this is where we're going to see is which strength did you see? You may have noticed that the home visitor was sitting by the side modeling language, encouraging the child, and switching techniques to match what the child was interested in. So, I'm going to push out a little pulse check to you, and I want you to click the green thumbs up if you did see it and the red thumbs down if you did not see it. Alright. Those answers are coming in. So far—so far everybody saw those things, couple people didn't, and that's OK. I would highly encourage you to watch the video again. It is available in ... As part of the Home Visitor Online Handbook, and you'll be able to find it there. But a vast majority of people were able to see that—were able to see some of those strengths.

Now let's look at some areas of improvement. So, some areas of improvement that this home visitor may want to work on is providing some additional suggestions or instructions to the parent for the activity, handing the blocks to the parents rather than the child, and letting the parent know what the child is learning from this activity. Now, we also want to keep in mind that this is a very short one-minute video and that we don't really know what happens before the videotaping started or what happens after.

So, even just some of those areas of improvement that we see may be things that they're already working on or things that were provided before or after. Alright. Our next key strategy here is opportunities for coaching and strengths-based performance feedback. Now, you'll notice that reflective supervision is grayed out on this slide. We're actually going to talk about it in just a little bit on the next section.

So, professional development can have a lot of different goals, but sometimes the goal is just to increase awareness about a particular topic, and this could be what your school readiness goals are and how they're created, why a home visit is important, and even some language milestones. Some goals are developed to develop specific skills, so this might be administering vision and hearing screenings or creating quality socialization plans. And some are to use and increase your skills in context. So, this could be encouraging parents to respond to children's cues or planning home visit and socialization activities jointly with families. So, each goal builds on the last like a house and increases in complexity.

So, professional development strategies you use should not be an applicable goal that you're trying to support. Also, encouraging the use of skills in context requires some follow up from the PD activity, action planning, and even possible coaching or mentoring which we're going to explore a little bit later in the webinar. But if you want a home visitor to consistently use the home visiting practice during the home visit for socialization, it will probably require a more highly complex PD strategy such as coaching.

And with coaching, you have the opportunity to provide and try out and practice during a home visit and socialization, so a home visitor can receive feedback and be able to adjust how they're doing it. Alright. So, we look at the Head Start Performance Standards, and we see that this is a really great place to start when we're talking about coaching for home visitors. And so, we take a look at 1302.92(c), and so this standard requires that all programs implement a research-based coordinated coaching strategy for education staff. We also know that implementing a research-based coordinated coaching strategy is part of a program's coordinated approach to professional development which is outlined in 1302.92(b).

So, many programs are using practice-based coaching with their staff. So ... But before we duck straight into practice-based coaching, let's take a look at why we're taking a look at coaching in early childhood. So, we trace this answer back to meta-analysis by Joyce and Showers in 2002 where they took a look at several studies to see what types of PD were likely our most effective in desired outcomes. Since the metadata analysis, there has been other PD research that has supported these findings.

So, according to this research, we learned that professional development of theory and discussion were likely increased for knowledge for 10% of participants and increased skills by 5%, but none of them will really take them in context. It says in the classroom on our chart that it's really the work environment. No matter what their work environment is, none of it's really going to translate back. Now, if we add demonstration, such as video or by the trainer, in addition to our theory and discussion, then we see a 30% increase in knowledge, a 20% increase in skill, but we can't really estimate any of that actually being used in their regular workday.

So, when we add practicing and getting feedback, then the knowledge increases to 60%, the 60% also demonstrating this new skill, but only 5%—that's about one in 20 people—that'll actually take this skill into their work environment. So, according to the research, the most effective professional development strategy with the greatest impact actually is the combination of all of those things. Theory and discussion plus demonstration in training plus practice and feedback plus coaching in the work environment gives us the greatest gain across which you see is 95% in all of those categories.

So, here we see a theory of change. I'm going to kind of click us through all these pieces, and all of them focus on a theory of change for professional development. It illustrates what we believe and what we see how professional development, including coaching, can impact education staff.

So, the Head Start Early Outcomes Framework provides us with information about what and how children learn. The puzzle represents professional development and what we do to support staff implementation of these effective teaching practices that are represented in-house, which lead to increased—increased child outcomes, which is what we really want.

And so, for home visitors, these effective professional development strategies help home visitors use effective practices to promote the use of effective interactions in environments by parents which leads to child development and learning outcomes. So, the use of the effective practices can be supported and encouraged through home visits and socialization. So, the House includes five integral components of effective teaching and home visiting practices, and so the next we're going to watch a short video before we get into a quick review of some of those components of PBC.

So, we're going to take a look at some of those elements of the House that are focused in relation to home-based programs.

[Video begins]

Announcer: The Framework for Effective Practice is sometimes called the House. The House represents five components of high-quality teaching and learning. Let's take a look. First is the foundation: nurturing, responsive and effective interactions, and engaging environments. Then, the first pillar: implementing research-based curricula and teaching practices. Next, the second pillar: using screening and ongoing assessment of children's skills.

Fourth is the roof: individualizing teaching and learning. And finally, at the center is engaging parents and families. So, what does this look like in a home-based setting? In a home-based setting, the foundation of the House is supporting parents as they provide nurturing, responsive, and effective interactions and engaging environments. This means helping parents notice, identify, and practice interactions that help their children learn and grow in safe and interesting spaces. When home visitors implement research-based curricula and effective home visiting practices, they support parents as their child's first and most important teacher while using curriculum that is grounded in robust research. Home visitors work with families to screen and assess their child's progress. Families can share their observations and gather artwork, pictures, or video of their child learning.

Together, the home visitor and parent use that information to plan home visits and socializations. To apply highly individualized supports with parents and children, home visitors work with families to plan activities, interactions, and learning experiences with just the right amount of support to allow all children to participate, especially those with disabilities or suspected delays. Finally, engaging parents and families is at the heart of the House and at the center of the home-based work. Building trusting and respectful relationships with parents and children is paramount to effective home visiting practices. In home-based programs, effective practices support parents and families just as parents and families support their children as they grow, learn, and thrive.

[Video ends]

Randi: Alright. Well, that video you can find on ECLKC. When you look up the Framework for Effective Practice, it's now there, in addition to the one that's very focused on center-based. So, we're going to do a quick run-through of practice-based coaching just so that we can make sure that we talk about the different components, as well as some of the considerations that we make for this, and we really want to focus on each of these layers. So, we know that coaching can be done in a variety of partnerships, experts, by peer or self, as well as delivery methods. These are on-site or distance.

We find that most home visiting programs are using that distance component where they can take the observations and email them, or they're able to use the Head Start coaching companion to share videos with their coaches. We also know that it can be individual coaching, which a lot of you indicated you're doing, or group coaching, and we know that the group delivery method for PBC is together, learning, and collaborating or TLC. So, we want to focus on what we mean by effective practice. So, our effective practices, these are the specific statements of actions, behaviors that the home visitors are going to use to support the families during the home visits and socialization. And these can come from a variety of sources. So, what we're going to do is we're going to put up a quick poll so that we can identify some sources that your programs might be using to identify these practices. So, you might be identifying these through a skill or observation assessment such as the holders for the home visiting skill profile.

The fancy Curriculum Fidelity Checklist might be one, home-visiting practices found within your curriculum, the Relationship-based Competency to Support Family Engagement for Professionals who Make Home Visits, which we're going to talk a little bit more about. Effective practice guides, the ELOF, or other ECLKC resources. So, go ahead and take a little bit of time to select those. So, you see that quite a few people are using the observation tool in their curriculum, and many are using that Framework, so that is great. I'm just going to give you a couple more seconds to be able to select those answers as we go through, and then I'll push that forward.

Alright. I'm going to push it forward to our audience. Alright. And you can see that a great majority are using an observation or assessment tool. Many are using their curriculum, as well as the ELOF to find them. And you can use any of those tools and additional ones to be able to go through.

So, we're going to start with taking a look at our collaborative coaching partnerships, and we use the word partnerships rather than relationships because collaborative partnerships are professional in nature while relationships take time to develop. But these partnerships, especially with home visitors, are foundational, and it's not only a partnership with the home visitor, but you also need to make a partnership with the family because many times, you're going in to do observations, and it's important for the family to know what they're working on. When you incorporate the family into yourself as a home visitor working on a practice, they really do get invested and involved, and they really do want to help you.

So, it really is nice to be able to include them and allow them to be a part of it. But a consideration that you want to take, especially for home visitors, is that because you only see the family once a week, you—you want to select goals that allow you to use that practice with more than one family, and it's also very important to understand that your success in meeting an established goal is not dependent on the family implementing that practice. So, being able to ask families more open-ended questions and trying to encourage them to ask open-ended questions, it's not tied to the family being able to ask all these open-ended questions to their child. It's about the practice and being a part of that.

So, the next component is about shared goals and action planning, and so this really focuses on that needs assessment, setting goals, and developing an action plan. Now, we make sure that we do this together. Usually, use that needs assessment, but we also want to take into account that these goals and the action plan are planned jointly between the coach and the home visitor and that you're taking into account your schedule, the caseloads that you have, the family means that you have, the experience of the home visitor.

All of those factor into how many goals you set, how complicated they need to be, and because home visitors take a little bit longer sometimes, you need to make smaller more attainable steps within a goal and be able to celebrate some of those small successes. The focused observation, this is where we watch, and we listen, so it's very important for coaches and for home visitors to pay close attention on that skill that you're trying to accomplish.

So, our focused observation may include live observation where a coach comes into the home, but they also might include videotaping, but make sure that we're getting parent's permission before we're videotaping because we definitely want to share with them why we're videotaping and what's going to happen to that videotape afterwards. Many parents really like watching the videotape because then, they can see themselves, and when you're focused on you as a home visitor, then it makes it a little easier for them to turn around and then go, "Oh, well I see what I was doing," or, "How else can I improve as well?"

And so those—those are really good opportunities to build your relationship with the family. Alright. So, we're going to move on to the next section of the PBC which is reflection and feedback. And this is an important section for coaches and for home visitors because we're really focusing on the strengths. We're focusing on the opportunity to affirm and acknowledge what the home visitor knows and their efforts towards working on these practices. So, we need to make sure that we're having focused feedback that is strength-based, specific and that is really going to allow home visitors to reflect on what they're doing and make sure that we're giving them an opportunity to discuss it with us.

Alright. So, we're going to move forward to actually taking a look at a case study, and this is where I'm going to hand it off to Brandi and allow her to talk about a case study, as well as through our relationship-based competencies.

Brandi Black Thacker: Thank you so much, Randi. Hey, everybody. It's so good to be here with you today. I'm excited not only to get to partner with Randi but to spend time with you guys because I have to say, out of all of the resources that we've created at the National Center on Parent, Family, and Community Engagement, you have been one of the most excited groups of this next bit of resources and ideas.

And so, much so because what Randi gave us is the foundation. She gave us this great grounding for how we do what we do in the context of the relationships you build not only with the child but certainly that intentional connection you make alongside the family, and what we have in the RBC, that's our, you know, alphabet soup for relationship-based competency, is an opportunity to bring all of that together in a super concrete way to use on their own, to use as a part of your coaching model, to use as part of reflective supervision, and we'll think about that together here in just a minute. But you have the resources also, Randi mentioned earlier in the resource widget that is at the bottom of your screen, so you can find them there. They're also over on the ECLKC, and I believe there also is a link here in one of the slides as well.

So, let's take a look together because if you guys haven't checked these out yet, I think that you're going to really like them, and if you have, we always try to offer a couple of pieces that are new and exciting, as we've all been getting to know these relationship-based competencies. So, let me make a couple of quick points before we jump into this scenario. These relationship-based competencies have been updated. For those of you that have been around for a little while in the Head Start community, the first set of competencies in this way that we're connected and woven in through relationships were built way back in 2001. And since then, we have been able to build on those because they were powerful and very helpful for those of us who really partner right with families directly.

And over time, we've been able to enhance them, so not only have they gotten more concrete and broken down into some language—actually you've already heard Randi use—that will sound familiar. She used the words earlier, "knowledge, skills, and practices." Well, we use that exact same language from the family engagement angle so that as you will read in your work that that will match up, especially if you're using it for coaching and that practice piece. But these are specific to you guys because when we have written these in the past, we actually write them in a big general way so that anybody who has the chance to partner with a family could pick them up and run with them.

But what we did this time was we actually have them written for three different roles: family service workers, center-based teachers, and of course you guys. So, this is what we're here to talk about today, and this is the part I'm saying that you're most excited about to not only have the version that is completely connected to your work, and I have to say, I am a big fan of your work because you have the best of all possible worlds. You're experts in early childhood development and making connections with families. So, you really get to bring this comprehensive holistic part of our work together in one big package, so that's what we tried to mirror. We put this together for you guys in particular.

So, I just wanted to touch quickly, the words that I mentioned and also that Randi gave us as we began this discussion a little earlier, and these look and sound exactly, like, you know, we've applied them in other ways. So, knowledge is what we need to know. Skills are what we need to be able to do, and then practices, that's the concrete. That's where the proverbial magic happens. It includes those key examples of what we actually do in service of what we're trying to accomplish with our families.

So, we usually bring this up because, as you probably notice, these three terms are really important to understanding not only how practice-based coaching is built, but certainly how we created the RBC to align with that model and that requirement as Randi said. The other part I want to tell you before we get into the case scenario is that we have ... It's a suite. So, what you see on this screen on the left-hand side is what we would call basically the home visitor narrative. In that book, you're going to find 10 different relationship-based competencies, and folks have found a bajillion ways to use these. We've had managers say that, "Gosh, we go into those, and we pull language from the competencies for job descriptions. We use them to enhance, for instance, our policies sometimes. We have folks who have taken these and then using them as part of credentialing and college coursework." The two documents that you see on the right-hand side are actually assessments.

As for those of you that know coaching well, you know that there's a piece of that which I want to talk about in a second as you get started in the process that Randi showed us where you're thinking about where your strengths are and where you want to grow as a professional, and the two documents that you see on the right actually support not only the home visitors themselves but their supervisors. For coaches, it depends on how you're set up on your program, but folks have found that valuable in a couple of ways. So, if you haven't checked these out, please do.

The other thing that I would note here is because there are 10 competencies, when you see these books in their entirety, they're kind of big, and they can look intimidating. So, what we've done is we've started to help folks think about where they might zoom in if you will. So, out of the 10, for instance, the first one is called the goal-oriented relationship, we're going to be thinking about reflection here in a little bit. The second one is called self-aware and culturally responsive. That's another great place for folks to start.

So, I would just humbly offer for you to consider to pick one that either aligns with what you're doing in your program goals or as a part of your five-year project period, and you could think about doing it together as a cohort of home visitors, or, in terms of the coaching piece, if you're thinking about your little personal professional development trajectory, you can certainly pick one as you would do in practice-based coaching that really resonates with you about where you want to enhance your own work and start there.

You have a ton of possibilities here. OK. With all of that further, let's look at this scenario. We're going to look at this quickly, and it'll give you a bit of a sense of how, you know, these can go to work for you and come to life. So, you can see on the screen here we have a case study about Anita and Brenden. So, the coach who's Anita, and she's working with her coachee, Brenden, who's a home visitor to support his use of practices that support families on his caseload.

So, the program that he works for has identified a set of practices that they want everybody, all the home visitors to have and to use with families. He recently attended an overview training of these said relationship-based competencies to support family engagement for home visitors, and since he's attended the training, he's expressed interest in improving his practice related to that fourth RBC which is the positive parent-child relationship one, and that's coupled with families as life-long educators.

Well, for those of you that know of the PFCE Framework, you'll know that those words are also not new ones. Those come right out of that blue column in the Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework, and those are ones that you're probably driving toward. In the home-based program option specifically, you guys really live within that arena of the positive parent-child relationship, and you really complete the trinity there of really serving families in a way that supports their partnership with their child in the development and where they're going with their own growth which is kind of cool.

So, this is Brenden's hope. He is thinking about where he wants to focus his energy. It looks like he wants to zoom into RBC 4, and you see what the name of that one is, and so if we pull this apart a little bit, then we go right back to where Randi took us which is, "Hey, the first thing we need to do as part of, you know, the practice-based coaching model for instance would be to stop and complete one of the need assessments and then review how that would come, you know, into formation in his actual practice within the context of the home visiting program option in the program."

So, you can see here that we have Brenden and Anita identify the practices that they want to focus on and work through together as a team, right, because Brenden gets to decide where he thinks he'd like to enhance, but Anita is there, as we would like to say, as a guide from the side or, in official speak, probably a coach, to do things like those observations that you see here, making sure that he gets the chance to engage actively with families and specifically, of course, modeling with the kids about how responsive language-rich interactions really impact especially when they're culturally responsive, and then of course, like, the thing that we all love to do no matter our role is support those playful and mutually enjoyable interaction between parents and their children. So, you can kind of see how this stacks on itself. Really what the RBCs offer for you guys is a whole nother, especially that practice layer, a whole nother set of drop-down options to think about as you focus on the work specifically with families and then how that can impact the trajectory of the child. One of the other pieces here that you can start to, as you can see how we're zooming in, we're getting tighter, you know, as we go through each slide, back to the notion of the supporting the playful piece and that mutually enjoyable interaction.

Brenden's goal then could become something like, "Well, hey. I'm going to make an intentional choice to support, create, develop opportunities for parents to lead IM moving, IM learning activities with their children." If I'm really in a space where I want to create that reciprocity and create the connection and continue to strengthen that with the family and child, then let's do it through some fun and through some play because we all know that ... What's the saying that they taught me back in my Head Start program? Play is the work of the young child, and when we can get families engaged in that piece, it's just advantageous for all of us. A couple more things quickly before I turn it back over to Randi because I know that she has to give you some other resources and wrap up.

I can't believe the hour has gone so quickly. Certainly as you're thinking about key professional development strategies, it's critical to think about of course the coaching pieces that have already been brought up, reflective supervision and practice and also as we think about self-care. I mean, when you're thinking about who you are and where you are and how you're really investing your energy to support both the growth of the family and the child, you definitely need the space to think about where you are and how you've been impacted based on your own journey and how you're really holding families as they continue on theirs.

On this slide, these things, just a couple of things that are helpful as you consider how you're going where you're going, keeping an openness and a curiosity is key, making sure that you have a chance to participate in your own opportunities to learn and grow, and then, I really appreciate this one, like, work less reactively and more effectively, so it's kind of like proactive and not reactive, as much as that's possible in early childhood, but giving yourself the space and giving yourself permission, I think, to really be in the spaces that you need to as you process with families along their journey.

The last thing I'll say here, and we can spend days talking about this alone, is self-care pieces, and don't forget to check in here. It has to be an important part of all of our work, and specifically for you guys. You're in family's home spaces. You're hearing and seeing things that some of us might not have access to. You're very intimately connected to the family and their littlest one, so for you guys to be able to take care of yourselves and each other in a way that includes things like, "Mom told me this." Meditation, exercise, I mean, we all have the things that bring us joy and bring us calm. Maybe it's reading a book. Maybe it's going outside. I have a 7-year-old son. I'm going to enjoy some time with him a little later this evening. You guys know what works for you, so don't forget that you're a very, very critical part of this equation and to prioritize yourself as you navigate along with families and their kids too. Alright, Randi. I'm going to turn it right on back over to you.

Randi: Alright. Wonderful! I am going to shoot us through some quick resources. I love it when Brandi shares. I love hearing not only her accent because that is wonderful, but also, she brings a wealth of knowledge especially around relationship-based competencies and relationships with families which are critical to home visiting work and some of these resources that we just want to point out because you have these.

You have the links, so you can explore them. It's about the Home Visitor CDA. This is one thing that ... Go through. Look at the handout that we provided in the resource link, but also use the link here to explore the website. I did answer the question about the specific Head Start performance standard, 1302.91(e)6, and I pushed that out to everybody, so you should be able to have that as well as the links. I know we've talked in-depth about the RBC, but the links are there to find them directly.

And then, you also have some home-visiting initiatives which are really good things to be able to look at around collaborative research and also specifically around the National Home Visiting Resource Center, the one on the right. They are looking, and they have a spot on their website because they have a project that's called Share Your Story, and so they definitely love to hear about home visiting stories as part of their research. Now, as we put it all together today, we just going to summarize our conversation in our last minute to let you know that we talked about knowledge, skills, and practices, exploring opportunities, and resources that are available to you. There's also additional resources that were available in the resource list, but you can download several links that were placed there as well as staying connected and expanding your knowledge. If you're not a part of our home visiting community, absolutely join it.

We love to hear about everything that's happening. The IPD is a wonderful resource to stay connected and use flexible, self-paced courses for credit as well as texts for home visitors so that you can receive practices straight to your phone.

Alright. Well, we thank you so much for joining us today, and remember that you do fill out a survey right after this is done. It will automatically pop up for you, but it's going to close three days after our webinar is available. So, make sure you do it soon. And that will close out our day.

So, we're so glad to see you, and join us in February for our next one where we talk about learning at home.

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