Grant Details

The Head Start and Early Head Start programs provide grants to public and private non-profit and for-profit agencies to provide comprehensive child development services to predominately economically disadvantaged children and families. Head Start's primary purpose is to prepare children to be ready for school. Head Start and Early Head Start programs must provide directly or through referral, early, continuous, intensive, and comprehensive child development and family support services that will enhance the physical, social, emotional, and intellectual development of participating children in the key domains of physical development and health, social, and emotional development, approaches to learning, language and literacy, and cognition and general knowledge. Programs support parent engagement in their roles as their children’s teachers and advocates, and help parents move toward self-sufficiency. Head Start promotes school readiness by addressing the key domains of language, literacy, mathematics, science, and social and emotional development. Head Start and Early Head Start programs emphasize family engagement because of the critical role that parents play in supporting their children's healthy development and school success. Effective programs engage parents in their children's development and learning, and help parents make progress toward their own educational, literacy, and employment goals. Programs also emphasize the significant involvement of parents in the administration of local Head Start and Early Head Start programs.

These leadership opportunities are designed to strengthen skills that parents can apply to improving their family's economic well-being and to becoming more effective advocates for their children. Head Start and/or Early Head Start programs will:

• Provide high-quality early education services that promote the physical, health, social, and emotional development approaches to learning, language and literacy, and cognition and general knowledge of young children during the early years;
• Provide services through appropriate program options: center-based, home-based, family child care, combination option, or with the approval of OHS, a locally designed option;
• Assure continuity of services and smooth transitions between program options when the needs of families change, such as when children are enrolled in full-day options with child care subsidies and families lose subsidies due to job loss;
• Assist enrolled pregnant women to access comprehensive prenatal and postpartum care through referrals;
• Provide pregnant women and other family members, as appropriate, with prenatal education on fetal development;
• Provide information on the benefits of breast-feeding to all pregnant and nursing mothers;
• Provide arrangements for nursing mothers who choose to breast-feed in center-based programs;
• Provide services in a culturally and linguistically responsive manner to support the home environment of the child;
• Provide early opportunities for children to grow and develop in warm, nurturing, and inclusive environments;
• Recruit, train, and supervise high-quality staff to ensure the kinds of warm and continuous relationships and stimulating interactions between caregivers and children that are crucial to learning and development;
• Provide professional development plans for each staff member to ensure that each staff person maintains qualifications for his/her position, including meeting all requirements for staff working with the particular age group;
• Ensure that the level of services provided to families responds to their needs and circumstances, including appropriate screening for all children and referral for children with documented behavioral and/or developmental problems;
• Ensure that all enrolled participants receive health, mental health, nutritional, and oral health screenings, services, as well as follow-up evaluation and treatment.
• Ensure that services provided meet the needs of children with disabilities and their families, including procedures to identify such children and plans to coordinate with programs providing services as described in Section 645A(b)(11) of the Head Start Act;
• Ensure parent involvement in policy and decision making;
• Provide comprehensive health and mental health services for children and pregnant women, including helping the family to identify and access a medical home to assure ongoing care;
• Provide parent education that supports healthy parent and child relationships, including working with fathers;
• Ensure formal linkages with other agencies in the community providing services to pregnant women, infants, toddlers, and preschoolers;
• Support transition planning with families that ensures each pregnant woman and child experiences smooth transitions into Early Head Start, and from Early Head Start to Head Start or other preschool programs, and from Head Start to Kindergarten.