The Parents as Teachers Essential Requirements and Quality Assurance Guidelines represent the structural elements necessary for model fidelity and support the development and growth of a Parents as Teachers affiliate. When quality services are provided to children and families, outcomes are maximized. 

Read the Essential Requirements for initiating a new Parents as Teachers affiliate, effective January 2011.

Consider the Readiness Reflection prior to implementation of the model.

An Affiliate Plan guides organizations through program planning to build a strong foundation for a high quality program. Designed as a logic model, it links inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes for families. It also helps determine appropriate staffing and budget. Keeping the end in mind as a new program is developed leads to strong programs and maximizes positive outcomes for families. The Quality Assurance Guidelines provide detailed guidance to support the completion of the program plan.

High quality Parents as Teachers affiliates regularly monitor compliance with the essential requirements and pursue continuous quality improvement. The newly released Affiliate Quality Assurance Blueprint is designed to help supervisors and parent educators maintain two vital aspects of model fidelity: structural fidelity and process fidelity. This blueprint is to be used on an ongoing basis, following Model Implementation training.

The Affiliate Quality Assurance blueprint identifies several central quality assurance and improvement activities supervisors should engage in (with the involvement of parent educators), including:

• Development of parent educator core competencies                                                   
• Observation of service delivery
• Review of summary data (including data on model fidelity, goals & benchmarks)
• Review of documentation

Annual Compliance Assessment and Affiliate Performance Report

Ongoing compliance with the essential requirements signifies that a Parents as Teachers affiliate can remain an affiliate with approval to implement the Parents as Teachers model.  Existing affiliates report on compliance with the essential requirements annually via the Affiliate Performance Report (APR).

Beginning with the 2010-2011 APR, a focused compliance assessment will be included as a core part of the report submitted to the state and national office. The 2010-2011 APR is due July 15, 2011 and can only be submitted via the Parents as Teachers web portal. Paper copies will no longer be accepted. This Technical Assistance Crosswalk has been prepared to assist affiliates in planning actions/strategies tomove toward compliance. 

Comprehensive Affiliate Assessment

In addition to annual completion of the APR, affiliates engage in an expanded program assessment every fourth year, incorporating additional data, stakeholder input and documentation review to support the findings of their assessment.  Both the focused annual compliance assessment and the comprehensive affiliate self-assessment yield action plans that help ensure high quality services to children and families. Together these resources for quality replication and fidelity to the Parents as Teachers model maximize the positive impact on children and families.

The existing Parents as Teachers quality standards and accompanying self-assessment guidelines will be revised as of July, 2011 so that they are more clearly aligned with the essential requirements and new data reporting expectations. Therefore, we recommend that programs do not begin the comprehensive affiliate assessment process at this time. For additional guidance click here.

For a fact sheet on fidelity and quality assurance mechanisms click here.