As families from many different countries continue to join communities throughout Chicagoland and Illinois, parent and family support programs will continue to expand their knowledge of how to best support and connect with the families.
Supporting and welcoming families from other countries, as both immigrants or refugees, is an on-going experience for many parent/child and family-serving programs. The language and cultural differences can often seem to create barriers for programs.
In our program we have built a group connection that brings families together and builds both parent-child relationships and community connections for the families. We will share specifics about how we have built group connections with families who bring many different cultural perspectives and as many as 10 different languages at once. In our group connections, families are invited to share their language and culture, as well as have opportunities to strengthen connect with others, recognize supports within the community and expand their understanding of English, all within the context of parent-child interactive learning and culturally sensitive teaching (and learning) about attuned parenting.
Jeanine Woltman is the Community Systems Coordinator of the Glenbard EC Collaborative and GlenbardPAT. Jeanine supports community connections and systems building for families with young children through the Glenbard Early Childhood Collaborative, serving the Lombard, Glen Ellyn and Glendale Heights communities. She is an early childhood educator with experience teaching both Pre-K and First Grade. For the last 16 years, Jeanine has been a parent educator working with families with young children under the age of 5. Her work has been both in home and group settings. Jeanine has a degree in Early Childhood Education with an ELL endorsement. She has also trained in the FAN program through Fussy Baby Network, trained as a Mothers and Babies provider, and is a certified Ages and Stages Questionnaire trainer.
Carol Montgomery Fate, LCSW, I/ECMH, is the Program Supervisor of the Glenbard Parents as Teachers program, a grant funded opportunity that grew out of the Glenbard Early Childhood Collaborative. She supervises 8 home visitors across 5 school districts. The home visitors support families with young children (under 3) who are at risk of not doing well in school due to family or child challenges. The support comes in the form of guiding parent-child interaction, understanding development-centered parenting, and connecting families to resources for all their family needs. Before leading this program, she worked for many years as a home visitor herself, and before that, as a school social worker, an Outreach Coordinator with a soup kitchen/walk-in ministry, and an international co-worker in the Philippines. She has 3 almost-grown children.
Social Work and Counseling CEUs are available. This training has been approved for 2.75 Early Intervention credits in Working with Families.
This seminar is co-sponsored by the Center for Practice Excellence at JCFS-Chicago.
