Parents as Teachers Archives

Corning Community Impact Continues to Invest in Family Home Child Car

June 29, 2026

Families First is grateful to receive an $8,000 grant from Corning Community Impact. This support will help strengthen Family Home Child Care providers in Cabarrus County and North Mecklenburg, including both licensed and licensed-exempt home-based child care providers.

This investment comes at an important time for children, families, and providers.

More families are turning to Family Home Child Care because it offers flexible, relationship-based care in trusted settings. These small businesses and home-based care environments provide care close to home, support working parents, and create nurturing places where children can thrive.

At the same time, providers are facing new state requirements, growing demands, and increasing pressure to remain open while continuing to meet the needs of families. Many are working hard to improve quality, meet updated standards, and sustain the programs their communities depend on.

Because of Corning’s support, Families First can continue walking alongside providers through coaching, technical assistance, training, and resources that help them navigate these changes with confidence.

Just as important, Corning Community Impact has continued to show up in person.

For the past three years, Corning volunteers have joined Families First in visiting licensed and licensed-exempt child care homes, helping deliver encouragement, resources, appreciation, and connection directly to providers.

These visits are more than deliveries.

They are a reminder to providers that their work is seen, their role is valued, and their impact matters.

Over the years, many providers have shared that they feel more visible and appreciated because partners

are showing up at their doors, recognizing the care, education, and stability they provide every day.

That kind of presence matters.

It helps providers feel connected to a larger community of support while reinforcing the importance of Family Home Child Care as an essential part of the early childhood system.

When Family Home Child Care providers succeed, children gain access to stable, high-quality care. Parents also have the support they need to work with confidence. As a result, our whole community becomes stronger.

We are thankful for Corning Community Impact’s continued partnership, investment, and volunteerism. Together, we are helping protect child care access, meet the right needs at the right time, and make a bigger statement about the importance of home-based child care providers in our community and beyond.

Thank you, Corning, for supporting children, families, and Family Home Child Care providers across our community. We look forward to another year of showing up together.

Parents Find Solutions During Crisis

June 17, 2020

This pandemic has not been felt equitably.

Our country’s most vulnerable children are suffering the most.

The silence is frightening, and experts are discussing lifelong achievement and health problems. This is why Families First began rapidly exploring with parents to find solutions for them. We found disproportionate gaps in at-home learning experiences rendering child development stifled by increases in stress and traumas.

With the help of concerned parents, church ministry, individual, and corporate donations, the Cabarrus County Community Foundation/FFTC COVID-19 Response grants, and United Way of Central Carolinas, together we:

Delivered 100’s of learning activities to homes while remaining open for essential workers and providing 100’s of zoom, recorded readings, and more to ensure continued learning occurred in homes.
June 15th – Started our Critical Summer Learning Recovery Project: Free Preschool this summer for families who missed intervention therapies and are typically the highest risk.
Launch of our Front Porch Recovery program for our Celebrating Families group(s)!
Launching a 3-year commitment to at least 750 families (Core and Trauma). Services are in English and Spanish. This program follows our children from birth through 8 years old! What an excellent partnership to nurture, empower, and strengthen them for generational success.

Ready4K Parent Flyer – TI – English

Ready4K Parent Flyer – TI_Spanish

Examples and More on Ready4k

Below are examples of age-appropriate texts families will receive on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday where parents find solutions every day to help their children learn. They also receive personalized contact information for community resources right to their phones. What a game-changer for our community!

The family engagement curriculum supports the whole child from birth through 4th grade. Each week, parents and caregivers receive age-appropriate text messages in English, Spanish, or Arabic with fun facts and easy tips on how to promote their children’s development by building on existing family routines. Content focuses on language & literacy, math & science, social & emotional learning, and physical development, health & safety.

During these times we are facing, children are suffering an increased and more intense adverse childhood experiences (ACE). When unaddressed, these potentially traumatic experiences can result in both immediate and lifelong negative impacts. Luckily, we can mitigate the adverse effects of trauma. Designed to help parents and caregivers find solutions during this crisis and buffer the effects of trauma by strengthening the five protective factors: Parental Resilience, Social Connections, Knowledge of Parenting & Child Development, Concrete Support in Times of Need, and Social & Emotional Competency of Children.

Personalized Learning is an individualized family learning program based on children’s results on the Ages & Stages Questionnaires®, Third Edition (ASQ®-3) referrals supplement services. Text messages support healthy growth and development measured by ASQ-3: Communication, Gross Motor, Fine Motor, Personal-Social, and Problem Solving.

Parents as Teachers: Young Mom Pursues Her Dreams

April 24, 2019

Vanessa has come a long way since beginning the Parents as Teachers (PAT) program in 2016. At the time, the teen mom was seeking guidance on how to give her infant daughter the best start to life. Nearly three years later, both mom and daughter are thriving.

Parents as Teachers provided guidance, support and resources to help Vanessa understand and navigate the early years of her daughter’s life. Not only did PAT teach her about her daughter’s developmental milestones and how to keep her healthy, it also helped the young mom get through the challenging times, which she struggled with due to her age and lack of experience.

Parents as Teachers: The Success of a Young Hispanic Family in Cabarrus County

April 1, 2019

Erika was young when she enrolled in Parents as Teachers (PAT) in 2014. After giving birth to her first child, she and her husband were seeking guidance in parenting and navigating life and desired someone who was bilingual to help them through this overwhelming time in their lives. Erika reached out to PAT and soon Aurora Swain became her family’s bilingual Parent Educator.

Aurora began visiting Erika and her family in their home and together they learned about parenting best practices, developmental milestones for their child, they began setting personal goals, and more. At the time, preschool was not on Erika’s radar, no one in her family had ever attended college, and buying a new home seemed impossible. That would soon change.