Fact Sheets

Overview of the Head Start Home-Based Program Option

     1) The Head Start home-based program option focuses on the parents as the primary factor in the growth and development of their children and the use of the home as the children's primary learning environment.
     2) The number of families that a home visitor may serve is 10-12 with a maximum of 12 families for the individual home visitor. Agencies determine caseloads number of families served based on national guidelines as well as local considerations. Children are enrolled; the entire family is served.
     3) A home visit of at least ninety minutes duration must be provided to each family's home each week a minimum of 32 home visits per year, involving both the parents and the children.
     4) There must be a minimum of two group socialization activities per month for all enrolled families a minimum of 16 per year that focus on both children and their parents. The purpose of these socialization activities for the children is to emphasize peer group interaction through age appropriate activities in a community facility, a home, a Head Start classroom, or on a field trip. These activities must be designed so that parents are expected to accompany their children to these group socialization activities to observe, to participate as volunteers, or to engage in activities designed specifically for the parents.
     5) Agencies must provide appropriate snacks and meals to the children during group
socialization activities.
     6) Home visits must, over the course of a month, contain elements of all Head Start
program components. The home visitor is the person responsible for introducing, arranging for, and providing Head Start services to the home-based families.
     7) Home visits must be conducted by trained home visitors with the content of the visit jointly planned by the home visitors and parents. Home visitors must conduct the home visit with the participation of parents. Parents must be involved in the planning, implementation, and assessment of each home visit.
     8) The home visitor must be able to communicate in the language preferred by the parents.
     9) A home visitor should be accompanied by the supervisor on home visits as often as needed to assure quality in the delivery of services and for ongoing support twice a year is suggested as a minimum number of visits.
     10) Home visitors should be allotted sufficient employed time to participate in pre-service and in service training, to plan and set up the program at the start of the year, to close the program at the end of the year, to maintain records, and to keep component plans current and relevant. These activities should take place when no home visits or group socialization activities are planned.
     11) Home-based staff, including supervisors, must be provided specialized home-based program option training and other educational experiences as needed. These experiences are part of a career development program for home-based staff.

Communication Skills Worksheet

Directions:
     Identify and record in the left column below examples of home visiting situations in which each skill would be appropriate. Then, as you view the videotape, identify examples of communication skills demonstrated by the home visitors in the tape. After viewing the videotape, record how you demonstrate this skill. Include verbal and non-verbal examples.
 
 
 
 

Skill	When Would This Be  Appropriate?	Examples from  the Video	How I  Demonstrate This?
Informal   conversation
Providing  direction
Asking  questions,  obtaining  information

How to Meet the Performance
Standards of the Home-Based
Program Option
 
 
 

Performance Standards

Examples from the Videotape and  Activities That I Do

Education  Confirm parents' feelings of self-worth.  Facilitate parents' support of their children's self concepts and individual strengths.  Help parents identify their own successes.  Help parents to recognize and enhance their individual strengths and encourage parents to take advantage of social interactions  Assist parents to understand, identify, and provide a variety of situations that enhance children's socialization skills.  Help parents identify and value the ways they learn best and to understand the importance of children's active learning through play.  Communicate with parents in a way that is open, honest and informal.  Assist parents to identify opportunities to enhance children's communication skills.  Encourage family literacy.  Help parents to understand the importance of regular physical activity for children and adults.  Allow time for both during and between home visits and during group socialization experiences for spontaneous activity by children, parents, and yourself.  Encourage and assist parents to provide opportunities for children's safe indoor and outdoor active play.  Plan with parents learning experiences for both children that reflect the cultural background of the families.  Use the developmental assessments of children's progress and achievement in planning home visit and group socialization activities with parents.  Assist parents in understanding how the educational aspects of the Head Start components can be integrated into families' daily routines and practices.  Integrate health and nutrition education activities into the program for parents and children.  Encourage and confirm the importance of parent participation in planning the education program for home visits and group socialization activities.  Health Accumulate and record pertinent health information for each child as soon as possible after enrollment. Work with the health coordinator and parents to ensure that all required screenings are completed on all enrolled children. Use health screenings as opportunities to involve parents in health education. Provide information to parents, as appropriate, regarding contemporary health problems. Refer parents, as needed, to appropriate community health service organizations. Arrange with the health coordinator to inform parents about available health services and assist them in scheduling further evaluation, diagnosis, and/or treatment as needed. Help families develop plans of action for medical emergencies in the home. Work with the health coordinator to translate findings of health screenings and evaluations into recommendations for home visits, parent education, support, referral, or advocacy. Review children's health records with the parents and help them to establish and maintain health files for their family. Use a variety of strategies for providing information about health resources to parents during home visits, parent meetings, and training sessions. Assist parents to understand their primary role in securing needed health care for the family. Nutrition Provide information and support parents in planning and preparing nutritious meals in the home. Serve nutritious meals and snacks during group socialization activities. Work with and support families in establishing consistent routine meal patterns in the home. Encourage parents to serve appropriate quantities and varieties of food they prepare at home for their young children. Work with parents to utilize food preparation and mealtime as learning opportunities in the home and during group socialization activities. Plan with parents a food preparation activity to conduct with children in the home and at group socialization activities at least once a month. Work with parents to prepare children for new food experiences through home and group socialization activities. Assist parents in planning for relaxed mealtimes at home. Make suggestions and encourage parents to assign children responsibilities of table setting and cleanup during meals served at home, consistent with cultural and family expectations.  Use an integrated approach for introducing nutrition concepts to families.  Plan and conduct a variety of food and nutrition related activities with parents.  Request assistance from the agency nutritionist and nurses for providing nutrition training for home-based families.  Social Services  Handle crisis intervention and other emergencies by referral.  Use all community resources to the maximum extent possible.  Contact agencies to whom children and other family members were referred to assure communication and coordination.  Follow-Up on the referrals with the family.  Make regular weekly scheduled home visits with the family and, with the family, assess, address, and reassess family needs on a continuing basis.  With parents, identify individual family needs and, together, set goals and develop strategies to enable families to meet their needs.  Identify services that community agencies offer and what they may be able to offer in the future.  Assist parents in using local community resource directory, as needed.  Follow your agency's confidentiality policy regarding family records.  Parent Involvement  Encourage parents to participate fully in all aspects of the Head Start program.  Support parents' felling of self-worth and empowerment by focusing on parents' successes and strengths.  Encourage and assist parents to provide a safe and enjoyable home environment.  Focus on use of space, relationships materials and home routines.  Provide parents with guidance, information, and support in the enhancement of their parenting skills, and personal development.  Emphasize to parents specific activities that foster learning in children in the home and community.  Assist parents in understanding that all routines and practices in the home are learning opportunities.  Construct homemade learning materials with families.  Work with Head Start parent involvement staff to help parents avail themselves of parent education opportunities.  Provide adequate notice and give attention to transportation and child care needs.  Incorporate health, mental health, dental, and nutritional education into home visits at least monthly.  Provide information to parents regarding available community resources, such as adult classes in consumer education, financial assistance programs, family and employment counseling, or emergency food sources.  Enhance the role of parents as primary educators of their children by increasing parent's understanding of their child's development.  Encourage parents to evaluate each weekly home visit in his/her own words.  Consider the family's and child's current needs and interests and plan home activities with parents that will contribute to the progress of both.  Encourage parents to meet with other Head Start staff on an as needed basis.  Ensure the parents receive all available and pertinent agency information on a regular basis, through newsletters, home visits, training sessions, and policy group meetings.  Encourage and assist parents to participate in training and other activities that will help them to understand the Head Start program as an integrated whole.

Group Socialization Activities in a Variety of Settings

Issues to Consider

Interactions With Children

     To conduct successful group socialization activities for the children and their parents, ensure that all adults understand and accept these considerations:

• Children are learning all the time, and they learn best through play - play with materials, play with other children, play with adults

• Adults facilitate children's play by interacting with them

  - watching what the children are doing and describing their actions

  - talking with children

  - asking the children to tell you what they are doing

  - asking open ended questions that require children to think

  - responding to children's questions with brief answers.

     At times, parents and home visitors should observe children at play without becoming involved. This allow children to be children and adult's time to note how individual children play, how each child interacts with others, and what each child selects as his or her choice of activities. At other times, parents and home visitors should join in children's play. Adults can suggest different ways of using materials and say things that encourage children to play with each other. Adults can participate actively in children's play, especially in dramatic play and creative movement activities. In addition, adults can make suggestions that offer children challenges to expand their thinking and promote socialization. Parents can also use group socialization activities as opportunities for discussing parenting, programmatic, and other relevant issues.
 

The Environment

When using a community facility or a Head Start classroom , suggested guide lines for the environment include:

• Ensure that the facility is clean and free of debris and hazardous material

• If socialization space is shared with a child development classroom, ensure that the interest areas/learning centers are designed for the children to play alone and with other children and adults

• Separate areas with furniture and sturdy bookcases, using the center of the room as well as the sides, while still allowing easy vision and supervision of children

• Separate noisy areas (dramatic play, blocks) from quiet areas (table toys, reading)

• Pay attention to traffic patterns avoid tempting children to run from one end of the room to the other because of too much open space. Plan for traffic flow around the interest areas, not through them, so children and adults at work are not distracted

• Label the shelves with pictures or construction paper outlines of the materials displayed there

• Display table toys, puzzles, and other materials in open containers, at a height accessible to children, so they can make choices and independently return materials after use

• Use a mix of commercial materials (unit blocks, wooden puzzles) and homemade materials (milk carton blocks, magazine-picture-on-coardobard puzzles, bottle caps and other collections) to facilitate a smooth transition for the children from home to "school"

• Have access to an area outdoors for children's and parent's active play (preferably fenced).  The space should include sun and shade and room to run.  Safe equipment and materials should provide for climbing, jumping, sliding, throwing, and kicking.

     When using a home, consider how the above guidelines will change and which can be applied safely.  In addition:

• Think of ways to use the floor and, other spaces in the home for play

• Use cardboard boxes, upside down, as low tables for children's play

• Create furniture and other dramatic play spaces from large cartons (such as air conditioner and microwave oven boxes)

• Use cardboard boxes on their sides, wooden or plastic crates, and/or other stackable cubes to create shelves for storing materials

• Use kitchen utensils, plastic measuring cups, and other household items for play

• Use the outdoors, as weather permits, to set up learning centers.

When home visitors and parents plan field trips as group socialization activities, remember to consider:

• Field trip sites must be safe for children and families

• An adult should visit any unknown field trip site prior to planning a group experience. Ascertain its appropriateness for young children, make note of safety issues, locate rest rooms, and complete other preliminary scouting activities

• If the field trip includes a tour conducted by the site's personnel, make sure that they understand the interests and needs of young children, more "doing" than watching, more talking than listening, more moving than sitting or standing still

• The best sites for field trips might seem too mundane for adults, but they are fascinating for children - the local markets or shops, a bakery, a pet store, a construction site, parks, nurseries, florists, gardens and the library (parents will enjoy and learn also!)

• Follow your agency's field trip policy. 
  
  
  

Return to T.O.C

Head Start National Library Collection | BMCC Home