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The American Rescue Plan (ARP) was signed into law early last month by President Joe Biden, and will provide direct support and greater access to benefits for children and families struggling financially during the pandemic. Out of the $1.9 trillion passed through legislation, $1 billion will go to Head Start and Early Head Start programs…

By Lauren Guilmartin, Director of Early Learning, Music Together WorldwideAnd Anne Sailer, Teacher Trainer, Music Together Worldwide The following article was provided by Music Together Worldwide. Music Together is an early childhood music and movement program for children from birth through age eight – and the grownups who love them! First offered in 1987, their…

Whether we like it or not, some parents will always consider Head Start free babysitting. We can educate parents on the history of Head Start, talk about its focus on the whole child, and espouse its many other benefits. But no matter what, there will always be some parents who are just looking for an…

The following article has been reposted with permission from The Fatherhood Project, a non-profit fatherhood program in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, MA. Their mission is to improve the health and well-being of children by empowering fathers to be active, informed and emotionally engaged with their children and families. Research…

The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Resilience Center is a program under the umbrella of the Atlantic Council, a international affairs think tank. The program focuses on issues of climate change, migration and security. In December, it published an article titled “Migration Matters: Serving Essential Farmworkers During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” They write that migrant farmworker communities across the…

In a blog titled “What School Systems Can Learn from Head Start about Family Engagement,” Director of the Office Head Start, Dr. Deborah Bergeron, says that Head Start takes the traditional public school model “school serves child” and flips it to ”families collaborate with schools.” It’s this model of collaboration, she argues, that builds strong,…

Although many of us will luckily never experience the symptoms of the COVID-19 virus, many more of us will bear the burden of its ancillary effects. Because of staff and student cut-backs, schools closing completely, lack of access to materials for remote learning, and the flaws in remote learning, children and teenagers of all ages…

We’ve been doing these Year in Review posts for eight years now. We’ve seen some tough times, like in 2013 when the federal government was forced to cut back across the board through sequestration. But we’ve also seen some great times, like the nationwide celebration of 50 years of Head Start just two years later.…

To understand the effects of the pandemic on medical care, researchers with the COVID-19 Outbreak Public Evaluation Initiative (COPE Initiative) developed a web-based survey that asked respondents if they had delayed or avoided medical care due to concerns related to COVID-19. The COPE Initiative is a public-private partnership between the Centers for Disease Control, universities,…

My hope is if there’s one silver lining from this pandemic, it’s that parents of young children will never take the work of early childhood education teachers and caregivers for granted ever again. This past Spring, as public school systems, private daycares, and Head Start programs began to shutter their doors to protect the health…