Parent leadership is a strengths-based approach that recognizes parents as experts who hold the most knowledge about their families and communities. Parent leadership has been a priority for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) programs since 2012, with a focus on creating opportunities for parent leaders to provide insight on program design and community efforts.

While incorporating parent voice and engagement is a priority for CBCAP programs, evaluating parent leadership efforts can be challenging. The Parent Leadership Evaluation Guide is intended to support CBCAP lead agencies inclusive of both CBCAP state lead agencies and Tribal & Migrant grantees, in partnership with parents, to develop an evaluation that is specific to their parent leadership initiatives or woven into an existing evaluation plan.

The four modules of the guide are designed to assist CBCAP leads and parent leader partners to successfully:

• Develop the vision and outcomes of parent leadership efforts in their state/community.
• Establish a structure and process for evaluating those efforts, and
• Complete one evaluation implementation cycle.

The guide also contains a parent leadership evaluation decision tree (pages 3 & 4) that allows CBCAP leads to identify the step they are in around parent leadership evaluation.  FRIENDS staff is available to work with CBCAP leads to ensure the process is supported, please contact your TA coordinator for help.

CBCAP state lead agencies including Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, and Washington participated in the development and pilot process for the guide. We thank them for their input and have included their work as case studies throughout the guide.  We also want to thank the FRENDS Parent Advisory Council members who reviewed the guide and offered their input and suggestions to enhance the involvement of parents in the evaluation efforts.