Home-school partnerships have repeatedly shown positive results in children and adolescents' emotional, affective, and cognitive development. Conferences held at the beginning of the school year have been effective in preventing problems of absenteeism, discipline, and dropouts.
To enhance parent involvement and participation plan activities that make sense to parents. Parents should be able to understand the value of the counseling program, not only in general terms but also in relation to his or her own needs and interests.
Provide parents with the information they need. Recommendations and directions are more likely to be followed if they are specific and suited to an individual situation. A collabortive home/school partnership can be differentiated as parent involvement, parent conferences, parent education, and parent counseling.

Parent Involvement
Encourage parents to become involved in the classroom. Plan activities in which parents can work cooperatively with other parents. Often parents can learn more from each other than they can from the counselor or teacher. Give parents adequate feedback on their contributions. Positive feedback encourages greater involvement and commitment. In addition, it carries over into parent-child interaction.
Parent Conferences
The Counselor-parent-teacher-student conference has the potential to be one of the most effective means of strengthening the home-school relationship while serving to exchange information, solve problems, and make educational plans for an individual student or the entire family. Yet, very few studies contain empirical data about parent conferences. One of the few studies measured the effects of establishing a parent-counselor conference relationship prior to the student's entry into junior high school.
Significant findings included increased student attendance, increased grade point averages, and additional parent contact with the school. Dropout rate and disciplinary referrals significantly decreased, and parent-child communication tended to increase for those who participated in the conferences.
What follows is a systematic, step-by-step procedure for an effective conference if parents are willing to come to school at least once.

• Initial contact: Set the tone with the initial contact to the home. Convey a message of cooperation and indicate that as the counselor you value their input. A statement like "we need your opinion" or "the information you could provide us would be valuable" demonstrates a spirit of equality and openness.
• Perception check: Assess the parents' initial feelings about coming to school. Engage them in a dialogue that covers questions such as the following:
  • Have the parents had previous contact with the school?
  • Was the contact positive or negative
  • Do the parents understand the role of the school counselor?
  • What are the parents' feelings toward the school and their child's school experiences?
  • Are they willing to be part of the helping process?
• Information delivery: Introduce the critical information concerning the child such as academic, behavioral or social difficulties. Explanation should be simple and concrete. Cooperation and encouragement should be the mutual goal. The focus should be on the problem not on personalities which may be involved. The focus should be in the "here-and-now".
• Reception check: Respond to feelings, understanding and reaction of parents. Ask, "How are you feeling about what I've told you?" Assess their commitment and understanding. Have alternative methods of presenting information since parents differ in their knowledge, their level of understanding, and their school experiences. Elicit suggestions from them about potential strategies to explore.
• Assess the family dynamics: Explore relationships in the family in a nonthreatening way to assess if strategies can be realistically carried out by the parent(s). For example, "Are there any problems that the parents are aware of in the family regarding other children?": "Is the home atmosphere calm or tense": "Are work schedules erratic; is supervision reliable and consistent"; and "Do other family members get along?"
• Education and strategy implementation: Assess if the parent(s) are willing to work cooperatively to help the child. Involve the child at this stage of the process.
• Summarize, confirm, clarify: The counselor should summarize the information discussed and presented, repeat strategies to be used to help the child, and restate what each person has greed to do in terms of behavior changes, homework assignments, and family/school responsibilities. This may also be reinforced with a written contract signed by all parties involved. This helps solidify the agreement. Also include your name and telephone number, as well as the best time to reach you in the event the family needs some reinforcement or needs to amend the contract. Check for final questions and set a time for a follow-up meeting.
• Follow-up for follow-through: Follow-up on plans discussed in the conference 48-72 hours later. Express positive feelings about the conference; offer support and encouragement.
• Confirm a date and time for the next meeting.

Student Led Conferences
School counselors can demonstrate support for teachers by initiating and implementing student-led conferences, especially at the elementary or middle school level. The educational objectives of the student-led conference: (1) to foster a sense of accountability within the student for academic progress, (2) to encourage students to take pride in their work, (3) to allow for more time for each conference, and (4) to encourage student-parent communication with regard to school performance.
A schedule of events prior to the parent conference could involve developing mini-lessons to prepare the student to handle his or her conference. Topics for the lessons could be: explaining the report card and grading system, selecting examples of classroom work to support the letter grade, making subject folders for displaying daily work, identifying strengths and weaknesses, keeping a log of homework assignments and time spent on task, using effective communication for leading a conference, and discussing appropriate social conduct.
Student-led conferences have the potential to:

• Improve student/parent communication and foster greater understanding of the child's progress and academic record,
• Encourage students to assume greater ownership and responsibility for grades and academic progress,
• Increase student accountability for daily work as well as homework prior to, and in preparation for, the conference,
• Eliminate the negative connotation that parent/teacher conferences often project.

Involving Parents in Their Child's Academic Performance and Career Development
Counselors, by themselves, cannot bring about students' academic achievement or career development. However, the counselor can capitalize on the existing interest and commitment that parents have for their offspring. Although many parents may have unrealistically high expectations for their child, career guidance and academic achievement are top priorities for students and their families. Many times all families want is a structured arena to discuss some of their anxieties about academic preparation and post-secondary opportunities.
They want validation that the course their child has chosen to follow is appropriate and congruent in terms of ability, aptitude, and interest. The following suggestions are provided as interventions for counselor involvement with academic performance and career development. Building parent involvement in their child's academic achievement include:

• Programs using the model of parents as tutors or home-teachers increases academic performance.
• Opportunities for families to supplement and reinforce their child's academic performance.
• A systematic communication network for parents, particularly on the high school level with a dual accountability strategy: (1) regular and timely newsletter communication of important dates, programs and enrichment opportunities; and (2) early notification whenever possible when academic or interpersonal problems arise.

In addition, it is important to demystify the child?s cumulative academic and achievement record with parent-student-counselor conference groups with discussion of the following:
Generally,

• Explanation of a cumulative record and what it contains;
• Discussion of ability as measured by standardized tests and given by category;
• Discussion of achievement as measured by standardized tests and interpreted by national and/or local percentile rank;

More specifically,

• Process past and present report cards with Question #1, "Is my child/Am I performing in school as well as the indicators (test scores) predict he/she/I might?" #2, "If not, why not?" What steps are needed to improve in school?
• Examine interests and tentative career choices -- (a) give the student and parent an opportunity to share expectations and interests. Provide fact sheets with general information on: (1) occupational job clusters and (2) differentiated preparation programs offered at the district's high schools (honors, academic, vocational, or technical) with prerequisite grade point averages and percentile ranks for each program and student's potential eligibility.

Sometimes some very simple things can be implemented to improve student performance. Some suggestions include:

• Systematically attending to homework at a specific time of day, every day
• Doing homework in a specific study area
• Having a study partner for difficult subjects
• Re-copying notes in an organized manner for systematic memorization
• Following a daily schedule for the completion of work
• Following a weekly schedule for the completion of assignments
• Following a semi-quarterly schedule for the completion of work
• Implementing a contract between teacher, student and parent: A homework contract encourages young people to accept responsibility for an agreement made between parent and offspring contingent upon the completion of teacher requirements. Complying to academic requirements and performing appropriately provides certain rewards agreed upon prior to the goal.
• Incorporating time-management strategies between school, family, extracurricular, and leisure activities often creates insight in itself. Time-management skills are often a critical component of anyone's maximum performance.
• Implementing a weekly "progress report" from the teacher whose subject is most difficult for the student helps to align goals, objectives, and expected performance.
• Identify specific academic study skill problems that a student may have and as a team focus on specific strategies that may remediate the problem.

Family Counseling
Researchers have always understood that the problems they deal with arise largely in families and take their form from family relationships. A number of theoretical models have evolved with their respective counseling techniques. However, many therapists are eclectic and use the model and technique most appropriate for a particular family and treatment setting. A brief synopsis of eight models follow:

• Generational. Focuses on the importance of differentiation, relationships between generations, transgenerational dysfunctions (such as alcoholism, and depression. Therapists are directive, focusing as teachers and coaches.
• Communications. Describe pathology manifested in dysfunctional communication patterns.Treatment focuses changing interpersonal interaction patterns to promote growth, increase self-esteem, conflict resolution, and new adaptive responses to dysfunctional communication.
• Structural. Views family dysfunction as a consequence of family structure Wisdom and insight comes only after structural change.
• Systems. Family systems theory emphasizes the influence of networks of relationships upon individuals. Relationships can be understood as any unit of interaction or communication between individuals

More than ever before, counselors are focusing their attention on the family environment because of it's influence on the individuals that they serve.. Strategies for counseling parents usually fall into three general categories: (1) informational, (2) educational, and (3) psychotherapeutic. Parent fact sheets and InfoFrames serve as informational and educational components to the life skills components of this text. Psychotherapeutic resources appear under the chapter on comprehensive session plans.

In terms of counselor's psychotherapeutic initiatives, it is perhaps important to differentiate between families experiencing reactions to recent stress from those with chronic, long-standig problems. The former is probably appropriate to counsel, the latter to refer.
All families experience temporary stress associated with predictable life crises in the family cycle (e.g. birth, loss, separation, transitions), Healthy families may need only supportive counseling during these times. Unhealthy families, however, probably need referral because they have fewer coping mechanisms. In general, the following situations are appropriate for supportive counseling:

• Families in transition have some adjustment difficulties because of moving, birth or remarriage.
• Behavior problems of recent origin such as a substance abusing child.

The following situations reflect families with more chronic problems which probably should be referred for more intensive help:

• Longstanding chemical dependency or abuse. Therapy for this disease is often highly specialized. Chemical dependency also is often transgenerational,
• Longstanding family problems such as chronic marital difficulties, physical, emotional abuse, or a child with serious behavior problems,
• A history of psychiatric disturbance in the family such as debilitating depression, crippling anxiety, psychosis, and other conditions requiring medication and or hospitalization.