Principles for Engaging with Families: A framework for local authorities and national organisations to evaluate and improve engagement with families

What is important is not just that engagement with families happens, but how it happens. As this booklet shows, partnership should be based on a ‘principled’ approach that recognises and builds on parents’ expertise, where professionals and parents really listen to and learn from each other in ways that are valued and evaluated by parents themselves. Demonstrated here are the importance of the processes of engagement and the importance of making explicit the beliefs and values held by those working to engage with families across the many agencies that play a part infamilies’ lives.