Making links with home -

Communicating with parents and carers


Close links between a child’s home and your setting are essential for a smooth transition from the home environment, with familiar people, surroundings and routines, to the initially unfamiliar environment of your setting. Information shared about the child by parents or carers can prove to be vital to providing the right support for them in school.


Here are some ideas for how you can involve parents and carers in your children's learning through communication.


Parent and child arriving at a centre in the rain.


Communicate frequently with parents and carers

You can do this:

          • in person at drop off and collection times
          • through printed materials (e.g. weekly newsletters)
          • online (e.g. a website for parents and carers, group or individual emails).

Ask parents and carers whether the information being shared is useful and if they have any suggestions for improvements.

Enable communication with all parents and carers

Not all parents and carers will be able to communicate confidently in the school language. Make sure that you are aware of language differences and try to find ways of accommodating them. You could, for example, consider circulating key written communications in more than one language, or enlisting the help of a staff member with the same home language to help you to communicate key messages verbally. 

Some parents cannot be there at collection times due to other commitments, consider using more than one way of communicating with parents and carers, such as a noticeboard by the front door and email.

Make the most of your contact with parents and carers

Greet parents and carers when possible. This is also an opportunity for celebrating different home languages by greeting the child and their parent or carer in their home language. 

When speaking with parents and carers, share specific information about their child's progress. For example, ‘She had so much fun creating clay animals today!’ is more satisfying to a parent or carer than ‘She's doing fine.’

Listen to parents and get to know the child’s family and home life, for example, family routine, family members, what they say they do with their child. This helps to build good working relationships with parents and carers. It is particularly useful if the child is finding aspects of home or school difficult. The parents or carers will have important knowledge of their child’s needs.