Essential Allies: Families as Advisors

This guide is intended for helping those providing services to infants and young children with special needs in working more effectively with family members at the program and policy level. The guide stresses the benefits and barriers to family participation in advisory activities and offers guidelines for promoting family participation. It also offers specific strategies for identifying families to serve in advisory capacities, approaches for supporting and maintaining their involvement, and ideas for expanding the networks of parents who provide input and guidance at the policy level. Included throughout are examples of family/provider collaboration that demonstrate the diversity of ways that families are influencing policy and practice in health and other human service organizations and institutions. The guide emphasizes approaches for involving families who, because of socioeconomic status, educational background, or language or cultural differences, have been under-represented in advisory roles. Appendices provide sample job descriptions, samples of materials for recruiting and selecting families for staff positions, and sample documents for developing family advisory boards.