8 Essential Books for Strengthening Your Work with Families

Families are the experts on their young children, and securing their input and engagement is critical to the future success of their child—and your program! Add these trusted resources to your professional bookshelf, and use them to strengthen your work with families, gather important information from them, and build trust with diverse parents and caregivers.

Tackling the Tough Stuff

A Home Visitor’s Guide to Supporting Families at Risk, Second Edition
By Angela M. Tomlin, Ph.D., HSPP, IMH-E®, & Stephan A. Viehweg, LCSW, ACSW, IECMH-E®, CYC-P

Why This Book Matters: Now more than ever, today’s at-risk families need home visitors who can address their complex challenges with skill and sensitivity. Filled with vignettes, sample dialogues, and strategies, this book will help home visitors manage even the toughest situations they encounter on the job—and support and empower vulnerable families of children birth to 3.

Understanding Families

Supportive Approaches to Diversity, Disability, and Risk, Third Edition
By Serra Acar, Marci J. Hanson, Ph.D., & Eleanor W. Lynch, Ph.D.

Why This Book Matters: Today’s early childhood professionals must be fully prepared to meet the needs of the increasingly diverse families of young children. Updated to reflect recent changes in research and the field, this timely new edition will help professionals advance their cultural competence and meet the individual needs of diverse families of children birth to 5.

Coaching in Home Visiting

Supporting Better Outcomes for Professionals and Families
By Christa D. Haring, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, & Angela Rau, MAT

Why This Book Matters: The first book to apply the principles of coaching to the field of home visiting! The objective of this groundbreaking guide is twofold: giving supervisors actionable coaching strategies to ready home visitors for their important work, and equipping home visitors with the know-how to coach families of young children to effectively support healthy development.

Coming Soon: Coaching in Home Visiting Workbook
By Angela Rau, MAT

The companion volume to Coaching in Home Visiting, this workbook is filled with activities and exercises designed to help home visiting professionals translate big ideas—strengthening relationships, promoting equity, improving outcomes for families and children—into daily practice. Learn more here!

Life Skills Progression™

An Outcomes and Intervention Planning Instrument for Use with Families At Risk, Second Edition
By Linda Wollesen, M.A., RN, LMFT, & Brad Richardson, Ph.D.

Why the LSP Matters: An essential edition to the resource library of every home visiting program! Promote positive outcomes for vulnerable children and families by using the updated edition of the reliable LSP tool to reliably evaluate a caregiver’s life skills: the abilities, behaviors, and attitudes they need to support the healthy development from birth to 5. The all-in-one manual includes the LSP tool and all the guidance you need to use it.

Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Families

A Model of Individualized Positive Behavior Support for Home and Community
By Glen Dunlap, Ph.D., Phillip S. Strain, Ph.D., Janice K. Lee, Ph.D., Jaclyn D. Joseph, Ph.D., BCBA-D, Christopher Vatland, Ph.D., & Lise K. Fox, Ph.D.

Why This Book Matters: Challenging or disruptive behaviors that show up in early childhood classrooms are often first seen in a child’s home environment. Using the proven Prevent-Teach-Reinforce for Families (PTR-F) model detailed in this book, early childhood professionals can partner with parents and caregivers to prevent behavior problems in children ages 2–10, teach proactive communication and social skills, and reinforce positive behavior.

ASQ®-3 Learning Activities

By Elizabeth Twombly, M.S., & Ginger Fink, M.A.

Why This Book Matters: True developmental progress happens between screenings! The hundreds of simple, low-cost learning activities found in this book can be used in the classroom or shared with families so they can support age-appropriate progress at home in five developmental areas: communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal-social.

ASQ®:SE-2 Learning Activities & More

By Elizabeth Twombly, M.S., Leslie J. Munson, Ph.D., & Lois M. Pribble, Ph.D.

Why This Book Matters: Help families support healthy social-emotional development all year long! Available in both English and Spanish, ASQ®:SE-2 Learning Activities & More contains over 90 fun social-emotional learning activities, plus newsletters for parents to explain key milestones and one-sheets that cover important topics related to social-emotional development.

UNTIL JUNE 15 ONLY: Make the most of your end-of-year budget with our biggest sale of the year: Save 26% on these and other print products* through 6/15/26! Stock up today on professional development resources to enhance your work with young children and their families—this year and beyond. Use code EOY2026 when you check out to claim your discount. (Terms apply; see below for details.)

*TERMS APPLY: Minimum order of $500. Orders must be placed by midnight on June 15, 2026, and must ship to a single location. Must use code EOY2026 when you order. Cannot be combined with other offers. Offer includes ASQ translations on CD but excludes all online products, training, and other services. Offer not valid for international orders to areas served by our exclusive distributors (Canada is eligible).