Objectives:
We aimed to discover how pedagogical and professional employees and students in preschool and elementary pedagogy perceive cooperation between the school institution and the family. In connection with operationalizing this cooperation, we also investigated the approach adopted by pedagogical and professional employees in motivating the parents to cooperate.

Material and methods:
To collect empirical data, we used a non-standardized semi-structured questionnaire. We processed the obtained empirical data through frequency analysis and univariate statistics.

Results:
The findings indicate that pedagogical and professional staff in school institutions, as well as university students in both full-time and part-time preschool and elementary pedagogy programs, perceive family-school collaboration as a determinant of children's sense of safety in the school environment, a determinant of children's trust in school institutions, and a determinant of the development of children's social skills, such as fostering cooperation. The study also reveals that school institutions frequently motivate parents to collaborate with their children. According to respondents, risks associated with collaboration include financial constraints, the level of remuneration for activities, and bureaucratic burden.

Conclusions:
Parents' active involvement and participation are the main indicators of the functional cooperation of the school institution with the community. From the point of view of the child's socialization, it is appropriate that the two key institutions, the family and the school institution, representing the micro-environment and the meso-environment, assume a partnership relationship and do not fulfil only the pro-forma purpose of contact.