Family Service Partnership and Outreach Programs

Monday, November 7 – Saturday, December 3, 2022 | Four-week online course.

There are families with young children in your community who never come to the library, and might not ever come, unless you meet them where they are. This course will provide a framework to help you build partnerships with family organizations in your community that can help you reach unserved families.

Research has shown that children who do not attend any formal setting prior to kindergarten are less likely to become successful learners and readers. Conversely, early care and education centers that serve children prior to kindergarten have an important role in helping children they serve develop early literacy and learning skills that will prepare them for the transition to kindergarten. The library is in a unique position to reach unserved families through community outreach programs and early care and education providers through early literacy training. Class content will focus on strategies for planning inclusive outreach family storytime programs, offering early literacy trainings for parents and early care and education, and creating community partnerships with family service organizations in your community.

After taking this class, successful participants will be able to:

• Describe ways in which outreach programs can meet families where they are and promote literacy/family interaction
• Identify family service organizations in the community with which the library could build a partnership to reach families
• Choose books and resources that families can use at home to help their child develop early literacy and school readiness skills
• Plan an early literacy training for early care and education providers based on the early literacy skills and five best practices of Every Child Ready to Read®

Expectations: This class is four weeks of content. There WILL be homework during the fourth week which will be due by the end of the fifth week. Although there are individual differences, you may expect each week to take 3 – 4 hours of work which includes the readings, watching the presentations, participating in forums, and submitting assignments.

CALL SPONSORED: CALL is offering a limited number of free seats to California library staff in this Library Juice Academy course. Please use the link above to register for one of these no-cost seats. In order to gain the most impact from learning events sponsored by the CALL grant we ask that all participants engage fully (attend, participate, discuss and share). If you are unable or not willing to agree to this, please be kind and leave a seat or place for someone else.