Baby face qualitative Evaluation

Desire for adult-only interaction
Some parents in five sites noted opportunities to improve Family Circles. They noted the need 
for child care and adult-only interactions. While most enjoyed Family Circles, they felt that 
group activities were often too chaotic and it was difficult to listen to the presenter or engage with 
other adults while also tending to their children.
The presentation that I came to, I wish we had a babysitter because we all sit in a group and the 
kids are running around. 
Maybe more activities at night, maybe a sewing class, or a meditation class for moms or dads to 
bring more people in. 

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Baby FACE 
Wilder Research, January 2015 
 
Qualitative Evaluation 
34 
Program support 
Training and professional development 
Thirteen parent educators said that PATNC’s conference is helpful, but four parent educators were 
not able to go due to government policy and funding issues. Parent educators mentioned that the 
national training provided them the opportunity to interact with others in the field. Talking about 
successes and challenges was one of the most helpful aspects of the training. Many took that 
knowledge back to their own communities to improve their programs. 
I really like the national conference every year. They bring in a lot of people nationally, giving us a 
lot of information. 
By virtue of the fact that we are government employees, they couldn’t travel to the recent 
conference, because they couldn’t get approval to travel as federal employees. 
I think the professional development was very helpful-the calls and going to the conferences. We 
would have a share day where we shared information and activities, getting different ideas. That 
was really good, because you want to do something different. I brought some of those things back 
with me. 
Four parent educators felt the national trainings were repetitive. They reported almost
all the trainings have had extensive information on some of the same topics each time. However, 
some pointed out that repetition was not necessarily a bad practice, since new people were 
coming to the trainings all the time.
I think a lot of times information may be repeated. I think that is necessary for the new people and 
the new programs. 
Any time they are giving us new information, it really works for us. Sometimes, I do feel like we talk 
about the same stuff over and over again…Just about every time we have come to Saint Louis, 
there is a session on how to enter stuff in Visit Tracker or on how to plan a Family Circle.