The 6th Annual Pete Tarantola IAC Community Conference: Strengthening Families

Do you support families and their children in your community?. The 6th Annual Pete Tarantola IAC Conference is focusing on the Strengthening Families™ research-informed approach to increase family strengths, enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. It is based on engaging families, programs and communities in building five key protective factors. At its heart, Strengthening Families is about how families are supported to build key protective factors that enable children to thrive. The five protective factors at the foundation of Strengthening Families also offer a framework for changes at the systems, policy and practice level – locally, statewide and nationally. Using the Strengthening Families framework, more than 30 states are shifting policy and practice to help programs and providers working with children and families to take everyday actions that support parents to build their protective factors. States apply the Strengthening Families approach in early childhood, child welfare, child abuse prevention and other child and family serving systems. Come learn how you and your agency can enhance protective factors in the lives of families you support! This conference is coming to this area free of charge with lunch provided due to the generous contributions of the Regional Office of Education #26, the Area 3 SEL Hub and the McDonough County Interagency Council.

Training Objectives
Keynote Speakers, Breakout Sessions and Community Resource Table Displays will focus on the 5 Protective Factors within the Strengthening Families Framework:
- Parental resilience: Managing stress and functioning well when faced with challenges, adversity and trauma
- Social connections: Positive relationships that provide emotional, informational, instrumental and spiritual support
- Knowledge of parenting and child development: Understanding child development and parenting strategies that support physical, cognitive, language, social and emotional development
- Concrete support in times of need: Access to concrete support and services that address a family's needs and help minimize stress caused by challenges
- Social and emotional competence of children: Family and child interactions that help children develop the ability to communicate clearly, recognize and regulate their emotions and establish and maintain relationships