A good idea for a first meeting is to ask parents who are more familiar with school personnel to bring three friends to a meeting at a community center outside the school. Meetings should be informal and based on the interests of the parents, with transportation and child care provided. There are many programs and activities for parents and schools to consider. Some focus on family involvement in home learning activities and others focus on parents' continued education. Each school must select and adapt activities that best match the interests and needs of their families.
Social workers conduct home visits as often as three times weekly and hold small group meetings.
Families work on increasing self-reliance, learning about child development and education, and improving family functioning. The program operates at the Guadalupe Center, a multiservice organization in Kansas City, Missouri. Some effective programs are part of a national or state network or are supported by private funds. The Hispanic Policy Development Project has worked with hundreds of parents using an enrichment model rather than a deficit approach. Mother-daughter programs, developed at Texas universities, work to expand the role of Hispanic women by exposing them to nontraditional roles, campus field trips, and career activities.