Beginning Head Start is a federally funded community-based program for low-income families with pregnant women, infants, and toddlers up to age 3. This is a program that comes out of Head Start. The program was designed in 1994 by the Advisory Committee on Services for Families with Infants and Toddlers set up by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. "In addition to providing or connecting families with required services - medical, mental health, nutrition, and education - the Early Head Start can provide a place for children to experience consistent, nurturing and stable relationships, ongoing routines.
Early Head Start offers three different options and programs that can offer one or more families. The three options are: home-based options, central-based options, or combination options where families get a number of home visits and a number of central-based experiences. There are also locally-designed options, which in some communities include family parenting.
Video Early Head Start
Area penting
1. Child Development: "The program should support the physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and language development of every child." It also includes educating and supporting parents and positive parent-child relationships. The program should provide the following services or should refer family to an outside service that provides this:
- - Educational services suitable for education for these young children include arrangements, activities and resources that are in line with developments;
- -Home-visit;
- - Parent education and parent-child activities;
- -Complete health and mental services; and
- - High quality child care services provided by or in partnership with a local daycare center
2. Family Development: The program should help families develop and achieve goals for parents and children. Each family will work with staff to create a family development plan that focuses on all the different family needs including social, economic, and child development needs. Families involved in various programs will receive assistance to integrate all programs into one plan and a service system. Services that the program must provide directly or through referrals include:
- -Information about child development;
- - Complete health and mental services, including alcohol and substance abuse treatment and relief with smoking cessation;
- -People will receive adult education, literacy, and vocational training to foster family self-reliance.
- -Families will get help in obtaining income support, secure housing, or emergency cash; and
- -Families will receive assistance with transportation to the initial start-up program to allow all participants to access programs and services.
3. Community Building: To create a complete service and support network for pregnant women and families with babies and toddlers, the Early Head Start should assess its community and services. The goal is to create networks in the community to support their families and needs by giving them access to services and making these services more efficient for all families in the community.
4. Staff Development: Staff quality is the key structure of the Early Head Start program. Staff members involved with the program should develop supportive relationships with parents and children. The staff will have an ongoing learning process that includes training, supervision, and guidance to keep them focused on the program's key objectives and help them build better relationships with families and children. Development will focus on child development, family development, and community development.
5. Administration/Management: The administration and management used with the Early Head Start program will follow practices that uphold the nine principles and four pillars defined in the Head Start Initial initiative. All staff should be cross-trained in the areas of children, families, and community development. Building relationships will be the focus and foundation for interaction between children, family, and staff members.
6. Continuous Improvement: Ongoing training and technical assistance provided by the Infant/Family Network and EHS NRC, this in addition to training, mentoring, research and other evaluations enables Early Head Start program staff and services to meet family needs and their children better. Ongoing training ensures that staff will keep up to date and always be informed about program policies and guidelines.
7. Children with Disabilities: The Start Head Start Program will be responsible for coordinating with programs and services in their area according to Part C of the Individual with Disabilities Education Act. The Early Head Start program ensures that children with disabilities will not be excluded, and that these children will receive all the services they need and are included in all program activities. This gives all children equal access to services and resources to ensure proper child development.
8. Socialization: The Early Head Start program focuses on the socialization of babies and toddlers. The most important relationship at this age is between children and their parents. Socialization between infants and toddlers and their friends is also important but not the main focus. Socialization gives parents the opportunity to be in an environment where they can interact with their children, other parents, and qualified staff to learn more about their child's development and develop more as a family. This is another way families can receive support and education. Socialization also helps the community and team building by bringing many different members together and improving communication and relationships.
9. Curriculum: Beginning Beginning Curriculum The head plays a very important role in the development and education of children in the program. The curriculum includes five aspects: 1-purpose designed by staff and parents for growth, development, and learning of children; 2-experiences and activities in which the child will achieve the goals set for them; 3 - what staff and parents will do to support and help the child achieve these goals; and 4 materials needed to facilitate and support the implementation of the curriculum so that children achieve these goals.
Maps Early Head Start
Feasibility for program
Early Head Start is a child development program for low income families with babies and toddlers. "Every Early Head Start program is responsible for determining its own eligibility criteria." The key factors in determining eligibility are
- - Family income, which is evaluated by federal poverty guidelines.
- - Initial Head Program may choose to target their services to a specific population of their community to better meet their needs
- - Involvement in child welfare systems. This includes children who: physically, mentally or emotionally abused; children who have been neglected; babies whose parents have exposed them to drugs or alcohol and have no suitable caregivers; and children whose parents have died, been imprisoned, or hospitalized.
- -Many Start Location The Head has a program to help rehabilitate families who have been affected by drugs or alcohol. The program is not only targeted at children's development but aims to help all families and communities grow so that relationships with children will be healthier and better.
Start Head Start Research and Evaluation (EHSRE) Project 1996-2010
In 1996, the Ministry of Health & amp; Human Services (DHHS) launched a large-scale evaluation of Early Head Start (EHS) by randomly assigning eligible families on 17 national sites to participate and viewing their social, psychological, developmental and academic outcomes compared to the appropriate control group. Families in the control group can receive whatever services are available to them. This evaluation followed the family for five time points, according to the child's age: 14 months, 24 months, 36 months, pre-kindergarten and grade 5.
Findings that support the development of children
Findings from the DHHS evaluation show significant positive impacts on children's social-emotional development (eg reduced aggression), as well as the ability of children to engage in learning activities. These results are seen as early as 24 months, but continue through pre-Kindergarten time points. In addition, the latest findings from the 5th grade point of time reveal that children enrolled in the EHS develop more complex reasoning skills and show fewer behavioral problems. However, these results vary according to the type of school children enrolled in (high poverty versus low poverty). The highest-grade children in grade 5 are those who have been enrolled in the EHS, have also received formal early childhood at age 3 to 4 years and attend schools with relatively lower poverty.
Mixed findings for children's development
Outcomes related to the development of the language of children vary, so some broad reports discuss the minimal impacts to no impact and other individual academic manuscripts detail specific and complex, supportive findings. In addition, the two groups seem to benefit most from enrollment in EHS: those enrolled during pregnancy with children who will later be in the program, and African American children and their families. The EHS program format is also important, as children enrolled in the "mixed approach to service delivery" (home visits and classroom education) receive the greatest benefits. Finally, parents who attend parenting classes are more likely to engage in strategies that encourage positive development. These pieces of evidence can show a "dose" effect, so children who receive the most qualified parenting experience and have parents attending nursing classes (other than other demographic risk factors) can get the most out of the Early Head Start.
Findings that support for parenting and home environments
As Early Head Start is a "two generations" program, the goal is to promote the development of healthy parents and stimulating home environments through enrollment in EHS. EHS demonstrates effectiveness in increasing parental support for language development and literacy, including daily reading and improving home teaching activities through pre-kindergarten time points. EHS parents also report using fewer disciplinary punishment strategies with their children. In addition, positive impacts on parenting and caring behavior are seen by 36-month time points for families living under low sociodemographic risk, but do not appear until pre-Kindergarten time points for families living under high sociodemographic risk.
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia