Head Start

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. Through parent's involvement and educational staff reporting progress to parents, a joint educational setting allows appropriate educational experience for each child.
• Mental Health Services: Head Start and Early Head Start programs support positive growth of the child, the family, the staff, and the community. Mental Health Services provides 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 to best support 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 overall health for children, families, and staff, which assures that basic health needs are met, encourage 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, and 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 support 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 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.