Part II
Expanding to Better Meet the Needs of Children and Families

Head Start has seen unprecedented increases in the number of children served over the past few years. However, policies have too often been confined by goals to serve additional four year old children in half day/part year programs, without regard to the unique needs of children, families and communities.

The Advisory Committee recommends a more strategic approach to expansion which balances the need to maintain quality and serve additional children, with a greater sense of responsiveness to family needs and community resources.

The following five steps are recommended to guide Head Start expansion:

Step 1: Enhancing family services and increasing parent involvement.

The Advisory Committee believes that Head Start's strong commitment to parents has been a cornerstone of its success. Given the changes in families today, the Committee believes that Head Start should recommit itself to providing "two generational programming" that focuses on parents as well as children. To this end we recommend the following three specific actions.

Action: Review and expand current resources used for family services, parent education, and family support.

As Head Start programs assess community priorities, they should pay particular attention to the current level of services and resources focused on supporting parents in order to develop new strategies for expanding family services where needed. These strategies may include the commitment of Head Start quality and expansion funds to provide adequate staff to work with parents as well as linkages with other resources in the community to expand services. Particular efforts should be made to provide and/or link Head Start parents to family support programs in the community, employment services, family literacy programs, and substance abuse services when needed.

The Head Start Improvement Act included a provision which requires every Head Start agency to provide parents of children participating in the program with child development and literacy skill training in order to help their children reach their full potential. The Advisory Committee believes that HHS should promote this new provision through additional resources, materials, training and technical assistance and demonstration support to promote literacy and parenting skills. Literacy should be promoted in an atmosphere that encourages the development of skills across the generations.

Over the last decade, general awareness of the status of adult literacy in the United States has increased. Although few Americans are completely illiterate, many have literacy skills below the level needed to participate effectively in an increasingly complex society. The inability to read can profoundly limit opportunities, often resulting in unemployment and poverty. Parents with low-literacy skills who experienced frustration and failure as children may, as adults, avoid literacy related activities and communicate their insecurities about literacy and schooling to their children, and thus perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of illiteracy. According to the National Center for Literacy, the single most important factor for academic success is the expectation held by parents for the educational attainment of their children.

Head Start must address family literacy as part of its efforts to support parents as the first teachers of their children and promote the economic independence of Head Start parents. Data from the 1987-1988 Head Start Program Information Report indicate that 49 percent of the primary caregivers for Head Start children have attained less than a high school diploma or GED. While the level of functional literacy possessed by these parents is unknown, observations by Head Start programs addressing adult literacy suggest a wide range of needs. Addressing these needs will require a comprehensive and supportive approach.

Action: Increase efforts to involve parents in all aspects of the Head Start program.

As families change, so must the strategies for involving them in the program. HHS should support local programs in reviewing their current level of parent involvement in all aspects of the program and make renewed efforts to include parents as decision makers, volunteers, and primary educators of their children. Special efforts should be made to reach working parents, parents with special needs, and parents of children with disabilities. Head Start should continue to strongly support parent services that respond to the cultural and linguistic needs of the families served. Head Start programs should increase efforts to ensure that parents and other members of all decision making groups (Policy Councils, Policy Committees, Center Committees, Advisory Groups) have the training necessary to participate effectively and help make informed decisions about all program issues.

Action: Encourage male-involvement in Head Start programs.

A number of promising initiatives and strategies have been found to encourage male-involvement in early childhood programs (Levine, Murphy, & Wilson, 1993). Given the importance of both male and female role models in the lives of young children, Head Start should focus renewed attention on encouraging creative ways of involving men in overall program activities. Training and technical assistance should be provided to Head Start programs interested in innovative ways of reaching out to fathers and other male members of the family and community.

Step 2: Assessing needs and planning strategically.

Head Start programs should be allowed greater latitude to design programs to address local priorities. Such priorities should be established through self-evaluations, carefully conducted family and community needs assessments, and local inter-agency early childhood planning efforts. Such policies should be clearly communicated to the regions and grantees.

Head Start is currently required to conduct a community needs assessment. Unfortunately this important planning process has too often been conducted outside of other early childhood planning activities going on in the community. The Head Start needs assessment can serve as an important catalyst for community planning for the entire early childhood community.

Action: Encourage programs to reassess their total program during expansion.

For many grantees, recent expansion efforts have focused on achieving a specific target number of additional children to be served or making some specific quality improvement. The Advisory Committee recommends that HHS promote an expansion process that encourages grantees to reassess their overall program in order to decide how expansion funds can be best utilized. For example, some grantees, when examining their total program, may decide that the best use of expansion funds is to add a smaller number of children and to invest new dollars in adding more social service staff to reach families with more intense needs.

Action: Strengthen the tools and capacities for conducting community needs assessment and for assessing family resources and needs.

A complete review should be made of the tools and process used by local grantees to conduct community needs assessments. The review should include an assessment of other instruments and processes used by other early childhood and family support programs. Additional guidance and training should be provided for grantees, central, and regional office staff on any new mechanisms developed for conducting community needs assessments.

Action: Encourage the involvement of other early childhood and family support providers in the community needs assessment process.

HHS should require that Head Start programs work to involve other early childhood and family support agencies in the Head Start needs assessment process and should help fund demonstration efforts at community wide planning to ensure quality comprehensive services for children 0-5 or 0-8.

Step 3: Expanding to reach children and families who are currently unserved.

The Advisory Committee supports the goal of ensuring a high quality Head Start experience for all eligible children in need of Head Start services in a manner that responds to the changing needs of families. The following three specific actions are recommended.

Action: Continue to expand the number of children served.

As Head Start moves to better contour services to meet the needs of families, it must make quality a top priority and continue to serve additional children and families in need of Head Start's comprehensive services. Efforts must be made to balance the need for quality improvements, expanded scope of services, and serving additional children. In addition, some Advisory Committee members raised the need for further consideration of Head Start income guidelines, given the need to serve low-income working families and to provide greater consistency across programs.

Action: Set priorities to target expansion to areas of high concentrations of poverty and areas of scarce resources.

There are certain areas of the country that have extremely high concentrations of poverty. These local conditions provide additional risks for children of low-income families. At the same time these and other areas, particularly rural communities, are often seriously lacking in basic services for young children and families. Consideration should be given to targeting new resources on such areas in order to make a more significant impact on children and families in those communities.

Action: Provide additional support to address the special needs of Indian and migrant programs

The proposed expansion of the Head Start program and the efforts that will be undertaken to improve program quality afford an opportunity to address the special needs and circumstances of programs serving Indian and migrant children. Particular attention should be given to addressing the following issues of concern to these programs:

Step 4: Promoting full day and full year services.
Head Start programs currently have legislative authority to use funds for full day services. Given the increasing number of Head Start parents in training or work, Head Start can no longer continue to be a half day program for children in those families that need full day full year services.

The following strategies are proposed to meet the needs of children whose parents are in training or work:

Action: Allow Head Start programs to use Head Start funds to provide full year and full day services.

Maximum flexibility should be provided to allow programs to use Head Start dollars for full day services based on a family and community needs assessment. HHS should use the established process for assessing the need for full day services and encourage consistent policy interpretation across the regions. A variety of models should be allowed to meet the full clay needs of Head Start children and families including center-based as well as family child care-based services.

As Head Start programs move to full day, special training and technical assistance efforts should be put in place to help programs through the transition to full day, with particular attention to involving parents and programming for children throughout a longer day. Head Start Program Performance Standards should be enforced throughout the day.

Action: Allow grantees to provide services during the summer as appropriate to respond to the needs of children and families.

Head Start programs should be allowed to provide services year round where needed both to allow parents to work and to provide continuity of services for children. Such year-round family centers can provide an important safe haven for children as well as expanded opportunities for the total family during the summer months.

Action: Continue efforts to maximize other resources to meet the full day needs of Head Start eligible children.

Although Head Start programs should clearly be allowed to use funds to provide full clay services where needed, Head Start programs should also be encouraged to leverage other resources for full day services as long as quality can be maintained. In order to ensure effective services with other resources, HHS should:

Action: Encourage Head Start programs to work more closely with the broader child care community.

Today there are a wide variety of child care providers serving low-income children. While the Advisory Committee recommends that Head Start programs develop partnerships with child care and other preschool programs, partnership arrangements should always include investment and commitment to provide services which meet or exceed the Head Start Performance Standards. Head Start should be encouraged to work with other providers to enhance the care through activities such as:


Action: Improve federal child care policies serving low-income children.

Because Head Start programs are using wrap-around models, Head Start children are being served by a wide variety of funding streams which do not always adequately address their needs for quality comprehensive care. Furthermore, a number of Head Start eligible children and children from other low-income families are served by funding streams that often are not sufficient to provide quality comprehensive services. The Advisory Committee recommends that HHS promote child care policies that recognize that child care is a two generational program that should meet the needs of working parents and the developmental needs of children. In addition, steps should be taken to provide more consistency of philosophy and structure across federal child care programs while at the same time assuring quality services.

Step 5: Serving families with younger children.

When Head Start was created in 1965, it reflected the understanding that, especially for children in high risk circumstances, school entry was too late for society to lend a helping hand to families to prepare their children for successful life-long learning. Today, research suggests that for many families, providing one year of preschool for four year olds may be too little too late.

There are several important reasons for the nation to invest in earlier supports:

Today Head Start must seek the best way to build on this knowledge. Over the years Head Start programs have begun to serve younger children and their families in Parent and Child Centers and Migrant Head Start programs. The Comprehensive Child Development Program, a program currently funded outside Head Start, has increased our experience in serving families with young children comprehensively and continuously from the prenatal period to school age. At the same time, a wide array of other service providers - parent education and family support programs, child care and development programs, health home visiting programs, and many others - have been providing effective supports to families with young children.

The Advisory Committee recommends that Head Start seek to play three roles in meeting the needs of families with infants and toddlers:

The Committee recommends the following actions to enable Head Start to take on these roles:

Action: Ensure that the services Head Start currently provides to infants and toddlers and their families are of the highest quality.

Action: Develop a new initiative for expanded Head Start supports to families with children under age three.

The overwhelming majority of Advisory Committee members recommend the development of a new initiative focused on serving families with children under age three. This initiative should build on the accepted principles which are the foundation of Head Start's success, including the provision of comprehensive services, with a special focus on, supporting the parent-child relationship. The initiative should be informed by previous and current efforts to serve younger children, including those of the Parent and Child Centers, Migrant Head Start, and the Comprehensive Child Development Programs. Some members of the Advisory Committee recommend further study to explore ways to serve families with children under age three prior to launching an initiative.

The Advisory Committee did not reach consensus on the scope of the initiative or the exact amount of funds to be dedicated to the initiative. The range of possible approaches to funding includes dedicating a percentage of expansion funds beyond those funds currently being spent on this age group, a percentage of the overall budget, or a fixed amount.

The Advisory Committee recommends that 11115 convene a high level committee, like that which planned the original Head Start program, charged with developing program guidelines to allow Head Start to serve families with children under age three most effectively. The Committee should include experts in child development, family support, health, education, training, and related fields. It should include representatives from relevant public agencies as well as national organizations. The Committee will guide this new initiative and define its role within the constellation of service providers now offering services to families with young children.



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