Early Head Start
Early Head Start (EHS) is a federally funded, community-based program for pregnant women and low-income families with infants and toddlers. Its mission is to promote healthy prenatal outcomes for pregnant women, enhance the development of very young children, and promote healthy family functioning.
EHS evolved out of Head Start's long history of providing services to infants and toddlers through Parent Child Centers, Comprehensive Child Development Centers (CCDPs), and Migrant Head Start programs.
The specific goals of Early Head Start include the following:
- Enhance children's physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development
- Enable parents to be better caregivers and teachers to their children
- Help parents meet their own goals, including economic independence.
The Early Head Start program is based on four cornerstones:
- Child Development: Programs support the physical, social/emotional, cognitive, and language development of each child. Parenting education and the support of a positive parent-child relationship are critical to this cornerstone. In order to do this, all Early Head Start programs must provide the following:
- Early education services in a range of developmentally appropriate settings
- Home-visits, especially for families with newborns
- Parent education and parent-child activities
- Comprehensive health and mental health services
- High quality child care services, provided directly or in collaboration with community child care providers.
- Family Development: Programs seek to empower families by developing goals for themselves and their children. Staff and parents develop individualized family development plans that focus on the child's developmental needs and the family's social and economic needs. EHS Families that are involved in Early Intervention programs and require an Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) will receive a single coordinated plan, so they can experience a seamless system of services.
The services Early Head Start provides directly, or through referral, include: - Comprehensive health and mental health services
- Adult education, literacy, and job skills training to facilitate family self-sufficiency
- Assistance in obtaining income support, safe housing, or emergency cash
- Transportation to program services
- Support groups, workshops, and on-site training.
- Community Building: Programs conduct an assessment of community resources, so they can build a comprehensive network of services and supports for pregnant women and families with young children. The goal of these collaborative relationships is to increase family access to community supports, make the most efficient use of limited resources, and effect system-wide changes to improve the service delivery system for all families in the community.
- Staff Development: The success of the Early Head Start program rests largely on the quality of the staff. Staff members must have the capacity to develop caring, supportive relationships with both children and families. Our inter-disciplinary approach includes ongoing training, supervision, and mentoring, all of which emphasize relationship-building. Staff development is grounded in established "best practices" in the areas of child development, family development, and community building.
