Community and Parent Cafes
As part of CSSP’s Strengthening Families initiative, a number of states are using Community and Parent Cafés - a series of structured small group conversations that bring parents together to discuss issues important to them. The goal is to directly engage parents in building the protective factors needed to prevent maltreatment and promote healthy outcomes for their children.
CSSP is learning that this approach is especially effective in engaging parents because:
- The intimacy of the conversation and parent leadership help to create a level of candor that might not be achieved in a standard focus group or other feedback or input process
- The careful structuring of the questions helps synthesize knowledge across a range of individual experience
- Parents trained as café hosts feel that they have an area of expertise and skill base for other leadership roles
