Head Start

ABCD Head Start and Children’s Services, a family development program, is committed to providing opportunities and services to the diverse low-income children and families of Boston in order to support them with school readiness, self-sufficiency, and success in life.

A Holistic Approach to Early Childhood Education and Care

Unlike traditional childcare and early childhood education programs, Head Start does more than just promote school readiness. We strive to treat the whole child. We respect the importance of all aspects of an individual’s development, including social, emotional, cognitive, and physical growth. Our specially designed programs target the following areas:

• Disability Services: Head Start classrooms are committed to serving children with documented disabilities. Through a highly-systematized early identification process, and the expertise of our qualified disabilities staff, children and families receive the special education services to which they are entitled under federal and state legislation.
• Education Services: Ensures that all Early Head Start/Head Start Children receive a high quality, individualized and developmentally-appropriate, early education experience. The cornerstone of the educational experience is parent involvement. Not only does education staff report progress to parents, but they also involve parents in joint educational goal setting for their children.
• Mental Health Services: Head Start and Early Head Start are programs that support the positive growth of the child, the family, the staff, and the community. Mental Health Services permeate all aspects of the program, providing a framework of prevention and intervention that helps achieve positive development. This framework seeks to ensure that issues and concerns about children, staff, and families are addressed early and in a holistic manner that best supports healthy growth and development for all.
• Nutrition Services: The ABCD Head Start Nutrition Department staff ensures that all Head Start children, parents, and staff members are taught that nutrition is an integral part of their daily lives. Nutrition services are provided to the diverse populations we serve through culturally appropriate nutrition education, nutrition screening follow-up, and the provision of safe, nutritious meals.
• Oral Health Services: Good oral health for infants, toddlers, and pre-school aged children serves as a precursor to adult oral health and is essential for a child’s behavioral, speech, language, and overall growth and development. ABCD Head Start and Children’s Services believes that prevention, early identification, and intervention in the area of oral health are essential to ensure that a child is ready to learn. The program’s staff ensures that each child has a “dental home,” an age-appropriate oral health screening or examination, and when necessary, receives appropriate dental treatment.
• Health Services: We embrace a comprehensive vision of health for children, families, and staff, which assures that basic health needs are met, encourages practices that prevent future illnesses and injuries, and promotes positive, culturally relevant health behaviors that enhance lifelong well-being. All Head Start children are helped to acquire health insurance. In the first days of the program, they receive a health screening that includes vision and hearing tests, as well as a behavioral screening.
• Social Services: Head Start and Early Head Start requires that a Family Case Manager is assigned to every family. Each Family Case Manager offers referrals, advocacy, and the necessary supports to address issues raised by families, including employment, housing, education, legal problems, immigration concerns, finances/budgeting, health insurance, and family communication and relations. The Family Case Manager also provides an on-going point of contact between the program and the family to encourage parent involvement in the classroom and the many activities offered by the center.
• Parent Involvement: Parents are thought of as a child’s primary teacher. Children who attend a Head Start or Early Head Start program benefit from their parents’ participation in the program. Parents are volunteers, decision makers, planners, and partners. They attend policy committee and parent committee meetings to plan and support their child’s program. Each program has a parent representative at the Citywide Policy Council, where the members help guide the governance of the program.

Thanks to the umbrella of services offered through other related ABCD programs, low income children and their families also receive assistance in a variety of areas. We help children’s families acquire the housing, food, and fuel assistance they may need.

Give Your Child a Head Start

Head Start goes above and beyond what is offered at regular childcare and preschool programs. At Head Start, we embrace a core set of values, including a commitment to:

• Establish a supportive learning environment for children, parents, and staff, in which the processes of enhancing awareness, refining skills, and increasing understanding are valued and promoted
• Recognize that the members of the Head Start community — children, families, and staff — have roots in many cultures. Head Start families and staff, working together as a team, can effectively promote respectful, sensitive, and proactive approaches to diversity issues
• Understand that the empowerment of families occurs when program governance is a responsibility shared by families, governing bodies, and staff, and when family members’ ideas and opinions are heard and respected
• Build a community in which each child and adult is treated as an individual, while at the same time, a sense of belonging to the larger group is reinforced
• Foster relationships with the larger community, so that families and staff are respected and served by a network of community agencies in partnership with one another
• Develop a continuum of care, education, and services that allow stable, uninterrupted support to families and children during and after their Head Start experience.