Competencies of a Parent Educator: What Does a Parent Educator Need To Know and Do?

The article examines efforts by organizations and states to describe the competencies of a parent educator, to explain what parent educators teach parents through parent education, and to show how that informs parent educator competencies. An overview of Nick Carter's report on the status of parent education in the U.S. is presented. It describes the Certified Family Life Educator, a certification program of the National Council on Family Relations. It discusses how practitioners can use these competencies as they are currently articulated to assess their level of competency.