Early Head Start is a federally funded community-based program for low-income families with pregnant women, infants, and toddlers up to age 3. It is a program that came out of Head Start . The program was designed in 1994 by an Advisory Committee on Services for Families with Infants and Toddlers formed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. "In addition to providing or linking families with needed services—medical, mental health, nutrition, and education—Early Head Start can provide a place for children to experience consistent, nurturing relationships and stable, ongoing routines."
7-399: Early Head Start offers three different options and programs may offer one or more to families. The three options are: a home-based option, a center-based option, or a combination option in which families get a set number of home visits and a set number of center-based experiences, There are also locally designed options, which in some communities include family child care. Early Head Start is
14-569: A child development program for low-income families with infants and toddlers. "Each Early Head Start program is responsible for determining its own eligibility criteria." Key factors in determining eligibility are In 1996, the Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) launched a large-scale evaluation of Early Head Start (EHS) by randomly assigning qualifying families at 17 sites nationally to participate and looking at their social, psychological, developmental and academic outcomes compared to
21-564: A matched control group. Families in the control group were able to receive any services available to them. The evaluation followed families over five time points, according to the child's age: 14 months, 24 months, 36 months, pre-kindergarten and 5th grade. Findings from the DHHS evaluation demonstrate significant, positive impacts on children's social-emotional development (e.g. reduced aggression), as well as in children's abilities to engage in learning activities. These results are seen as early as at
28-528: A relatively lower-poverty school. The results as related to children's language development are mixed, such that some broad reports discuss minimal to no impact and other individual academic manuscripts detail specific, complex supportive findings. Additionally, two groups seemed to benefit the most from enrollment in EHS: those enrolled during pregnancy with the child who would later be in the program, and African American children and their families. The formatting of
35-564: The 24-month time point, but continue through the pre-kindergarten time point. Additionally, recent findings from the 5th grade time point reveal that children enrolled in EHS develop more complex reasoning skills and exhibit fewer behavior problems. However, these results vary by the type of school children were enrolled in (high poverty versus low poverty). Children with the highest outcomes in 5th grade were those who had been enrolled in EHS, had also received formal early child at ages 3 to 4 and attended
42-541: The EHS program mattered, as well, as children who were enrolled in a "mixed approach to service delivery" (home visiting and classroom education) received the greatest benefits. Finally, parents who attended parenting classes were more likely to engage in strategies that promote positive development. These pieces of evidence may point to a "dosage" effect, such that children who received the most quality early child care experience and had parents who attended parenting classes (in addition to other demographic risk factors) may reap
49-522: The most from Early Head Start. As Early Head Start is a "two-generation" program, the goal is to promote healthy parental development as well as a stimulating home environment through enrollment in EHS. EHS demonstrated effectiveness at increasing parental support for language and literacy development, including daily reading and increased teaching activities in the home through the pre-kindergarten time point. EHS parents also reported using fewer punitive discipline strategies with their children. Additionally,
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