Summer 2020 Newsletter
Olathe Parents as Teachers
Due to concerns about social distancing, group size, and health and safety, all Olathe Parents as Teachers playgroups and in-person Group Connections are cancelled until further notice.
We will follow the guidelines from the CDC, the Kansas Department of Health, the National Parents as Teachers Center, and the Olathe School District in making decisions regarding in person PAT services, including Home Visits.
If you are participating in Virtual Home Visits with your Parent Educator, please remember that if you need to cancel a visit, please let your educator know as soon as possible!
Thank you for your understanding and support!!
Dorothy and the PAT Team
COVID19 and Parents as Teachers
Dear PAT families,
To say we are living in unprecedented times is probably the biggest understatement of my 30-year career with Parent as Teachers! None of us has a compass to show us where things will go and what the timetable is for the return to “normal”.
Home visiting programs, like Parents as Teachers, find themselves in a particularly difficult situation, in which we have to make decisions on how we can continue to offer quality services to our families when we cannot see them in person. Your family’s health and well-being, and that of our home visitors, is paramount to us. Maintaining social distancing with toddlers is not something that we can expect. Of course, that is what we love about little children, so this is very hard for the PAT staff.
If you are participating in home visits through our program, you are now receiving those services virtually, mostly through zoom. The great part of this is that the National Parents as Teachers Center has been piloting a virtual home visiting program since 2015. Of course, they did not anticipate the roll out of this program this year, but because of their forward thinking we do have access to a complete system of support and guidance for virtual home visits! This is great news for our Parent Educators, and for the families they serve. This does mean, however, that for the foreseeable future, the only way we will be delivering services to our families is through virtual home visits and virtual group connections (which we are planning and working on as I write this!). In person home visits, group connections, and playgroups are cancelled until we are safely able to return to your homes and to our offices. It is not easy for me to say this, and I feel the loss deeply- not being able to see families coming in for playgroup, not being able to connect with you in person- is very hard for me and especially for our wonderful Olathe Parent Educators! We all miss each other!! Our staff has been connecting via zoom as well, and we have had very limited access to our building and office space.
But, our Parent Educators are the BEST! They packed up what they needed from our office on very short notice, and the Olathe School District has done an amazing job of supporting us and providing us with the technology and the ability to work from home, so that we can still see families and provide parenting information and support. Many of our staff have children at home, and all of us have had our lives turned upside down, just like you! Despite all the challenges, we are still able to continue to provide resources, conduct developmental screenings, and are still able to see our families and their children. Of course we miss the hugs, the times when a toddler sits on our laps, and we miss you parents!!
It is my hope that all families will want to continue receiving home visits virtually, but I also know that some of you have said you don’t feel virtual visits are right for you, or you would like to wait until we can come see you in person again. Unfortunately, we cannot fulfill requests to wait until we can return in person. At this time, virtual visits is how our program will be delivering services to families. If you opted to wait, your Parent Educator will be contacting you to discuss this, and will offer you the choice of virtual visits, or we can move your family to our mailing list. This is not an easy decision for me, and I do not like offering this choice, but we do have families on our waiting list and we are offering virtual visits to them. If virtual does not work for your family, we completely understand, but I also hope you understand our position as a program. I am happy to talk with any of you if you have questions. You are welcome to email me at dbhiatt@olatheschools.org
I do think you will find many helpful and fun resource in our summer newsletter. There are still many simple ways to find joy in the upcoming months!
From the Olathe PAT Staff and from me, we wish you well.
Dorothy
Program Coordinator- Olathe Parents as Teachers