Three-year-old Maliyah McKenzie and her mother Janiesha look forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays in their house.

“I tell her, her teacher is coming,” said Janiesha.

On those days the Skyway residents receive a visit from a representative of the Parent-Child Home Program, a research-based early literacy and school readiness program. It is designed to teach parents of 2- to 4-year-olds how to be their child’s first and best teacher.

Now in its second year in Renton, 97 families in the Renton School District are participating in the program.

“I really like it, especially the person that comes out to the homes; the kids love her,” said Janiesha.

She heard about it from a friend and now she and her daughter are participating in their second year. As a young, single parent, Janiesha said it’s difficult to know how to teach her children new things, but the program has helped. Maliyah likes the educational games her home visitor brings and she’s learning the alphabet and her numbers.

“It helps me to get her excited about reading and learning her numbers,” said Janiesha.

The Renton School District is working in partnership with the United Way of King County to receive services from the Parent-Child Home Program. As part of an expansion, the United Way began serving Renton families in the fall of 2011.

“We believe it is an opportunity gap closer and are very excited to partner with the Renton School District and we are expecting great results for Renton’s young scholars,” said Carol Van Noy, of the United Way of King County.

As part of the program, a trained home visitor comes twice-weekly for two years to participant’s homes, bearing gifts of books and educational toys. The home visitors are culturally competent parent coaches, who model behaviors that stimulate early learning. Twenty-two different languages are spoken amongst the program’s home visitors. This is significant because 44 percent of Renton’s participants are immigrants or refugees, coming from Cambodia, China, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Honduras, Laos, Mexico, Somalia and Vietnam.

There are 1,400 children total for King County in the program and the goal is to focus on those that are not as connected to other services. They primarily serve families of color and immigrant and refugee families of color. There is a priority to serve families from population affected by racial disparities because United Way’s data shows racial disparities in educational outcomes and even in kindergarten readiness.

Forty-six percent of Renton’s participants speak a language at home other than English. More than half the parents are single-parents and 93 percent of the participants are women, 4 percent are males. Other caregivers in the program represented 2 percent and 1 percent was a grandmother.

The United Way of King County finds its home visitors through community organizations with expertise in early childhood and that deliver high-quality services under that model. For Renton, Atlantic Street Center of Seattle is the service delivery partner.

The paraprofessional home visitors are supported by early childhood professional site coordinators, who supervise them and handle referrals to other services as families’ needs are identified.

“Paraprofessional community members can readily gain acceptance and trust by families, and they are the foundation of the language and cultural match between visitors and families,” wrote Karen Howell-Clark in an email.

She is United Way of King County’s director of early learning.

“The model intentionally uses a ‘light touch,’ with modeling by a trusted community member as opposed to instruction by an ‘expert,’” Howell-Clark said. “In addition to a cultural and language match with families, programs look for home visitors with qualities like warmth, patience, a non-judgmental approach to working with families, knowledge of the community, the ability to work well with both adults and children and enthusiasm for supporting young children and their parents.”

United Way is involved in collaborative funding relationships with the Highline and Auburn districts in addition to Renton, to host the program.

The program holds a graduation for its participants in late May or June. The United Way finds that the Parent-Child Home Program has a substantial positive effect on how parents interact with their children and it has an 85 percent retention rate.