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Reaching families
Relationships built on trust
Barriers on families' pathways
First steps towards solutions
Some preliminary questions to address before embarking on the process
Thousands of early childhood partners throughout Québec devote considerable effort to reaching out to families, forging relationships built on trust, and working together with them so their—at times numerous—needs can be addressed. Nevertheless, before we can begin to elaborate concrete actions, measures and strategies, we need to ask some questions. Even though they may seem crystal clear, their answers are all too often taken for granted.
3 KEY QUESTIONS
Who?
Our goal is to engage with larger numbers of families. But if we take this thought a step further, what kinds of families do we have in mind?
- Who are these families? How can we describe them? Are they vulnerable? Isolated? Poor? And what do these qualifiers actually mean?
Establishing a common vision among the intervention team and partners with regard to the target populations will allow you to determine whether or not your objectives have been met.
But that isn’t all…
Once you have defined the profile of the families you want to target, you need to make sure you clearly understand their needs.
- What are these families’ actual needs? What are they asking for? In the process of organizing actions and measures, are the needs expressed by the families themselves taken into consideration, or are they based on the needs perceived by the intervention workers and organizations? Are the families implicated when a portrait of their true needs and priorities is drawn up?
We need to imagine ourselves in the situation of these families and live a few moments of their daily life so that we can better understand their reality. This will also make it easier to introduce them to a service that appropriately responds to their need, even if the service is offered by a different organization in the neighbourhood. The primary goal must be to support families and steer them in the right direction.
And last but not least…
For some families, life can be a real obstacle course.
- What obstacles do the families come up against? What barriers limit their ability to better meet their needs or to access services?
If we gain an understanding of the obstacles parents face, we are in a better position to consider solutions that will make it easier to establish contact with them.
Poverty and deprivation can appear in various guises, depending on the particular realities and circumstances. As such, the more precise an intervention team’s target, the easier it becomes to pinpoint and organize the right kind of measures and actions for effectively engaging and working with families.
Reaching families more effectively: an approach based on the careful examination of existing measures and practices
Horizon 0-5 developed a project, known as Constellation: taking action for hard-to-reach, isolated families, with the aim of identifying successful strategies for reaching families with the greatest needs. Following a careful analysis of current practices and subject knowledge, the project was streamed into three working components, which encompass eleven success factors for fine-tuning actions that target hard-to-reach, isolated families. Focused on the adaptation of practices, this approach was designed to be carried out collectively and on an ongoing basis. For anyone interested in implementing the process, a Facilitator’s Guide to the Constellation Approach is available here.
To acquaint yourself with the Constellation Approach and access related content, please select one of the three components in the table below:
Reaching families more effectively
COMPONENT 1 :
Families' needs at
the heart of
interventions
- Success Factors
- Adopt a comprehensive approach
- Know your territory and available resources
- Diversify contact opportunities
- Create a welcoming experience
- Build relationships based on trust
COMPONENT 2 :
Collective
Learning
- Success Factors
- Foster learning opportunities
- Take the time to reflect and work as a team
- Put learning outcomes into practice
COMPONENT 3 :
Coherence: practise
what you preach
- Success Factors
- Develop a common vision of intervention
- Capitalize on human resources
- Allow for organizational flexibility
Source: Horizon 0-5, Success Factors Handbook, p.6
For further information
The Constellation Approach: taking action for hard-to-reach, isolated families
- Horizon 0-5’s Constellation Approach
An approach to reaching out to isolated families
Component 1 - Families' needs at the heart of interventions
Complete topic in french
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