Gathering strengths and building capitals: engaging Chinese immigrant grandparents in a collaborative project

The significance of family involvement in early childhood services has been recognised as crucial for enhancing the educational outcomes of young children, particularly among those from minority and immigration backgrounds. Extensive research has been conducted on collaborative practices between immigrant parents and early childhood communities, but it may be useful to pursue further efforts targeting immigrant grandparents, given their substantial influence on children’s learning and development. This study reports one initiative that involves a team comprising council officers, early childhood educators and Chinese grandparents within a local government area in Australia to design and implement a collaborative project that gathers capitals and strengths in order to support grandparents’ active engagement in Chinese immigrant children’s learning while enhancing their confidence in working with early childhood educators and local communities. Unlike other parenting programmes that aims to enhance parents’ knowledge and practices, this project elicits and celebrates working strategies of everyone involved. Employing the concepts of symbolic capital and strengths-based approach as theoretical frameworks, the flow of resources, strengths and values is embedded in this collaborative effort as an overarching theme. This paper explores how the theme is realised in the project process through workshops, reflective meetings and online and face to face discussions.