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I have a special place in my heart for foster children, having been a foster parent myself for many years. Foster children can often feel like the world has forgotten them, as the many adults around them are busy navigating the complex bureaucratic web that is the foster care system. While we all mean well,…

In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico. In 2018, California experienced the deadliest wildfires in its history. Just this month, portions of the Midwest suffered some of the worst flooding in living memory. When faced with the fallout from natural disasters, it’s the community-based institutions that serve the local residents everyday who are in the…

We received an email from the ECLKC a couple weeks ago, which promoted their February vlog titled “Home is Where the Love Is: Homelessness, Children and Families.” In that vlog, Dr. Deborah Bergeron, the Director of Head Start, visits the iconic Sesame Street studios to talk to Kama Einhorn, creator of Lily, a muppet character…

We recently received a great newsletter from the National Center on Parent, Family and Community Engagement from their “Fatherhood Connection” initiative, in which they provided a year in review of the many strategies they talked about in 2018 to engage fathers in Head Start programs. The way we see it, it’s never a bad time…

The New York Times recently published a story called “Cleaner Classrooms and Rising Scores: With Tighter Oversight, Head Start Shows Gains,” in which it reports that Head Start has seen gains in program quality across the board “more than a decade after Congress imposed new standards” that required “a third of its partners… to compete…

Uri Bronfenbrenner, often referred to as the Father of Head Start, wrote early on in the program’s founding that one of the goals of the program was to have parents become “captivated by their own children, supportive of their education & irrationally committed to their children.” Remember, our goal isn’t just to get parents involved…

We recently gave a free webinar on the three entities of Head Start/Early Head Start Program Governance Structure. (Sign up for our mailing list to receive notices about upcoming free webinars). In that webinar, we talked about the roles and responsibilities of each entity, as well as training and reporting requirements. Based on the questions…

The biggest news story for Head Start in 2018 was the program instruction issued from OHS nationally that says that programs will be required to attain full enrollment. After that announcement, full enrollment was a primary topic of conversation for attendees at The Gravely Group’s conferences and workshops. We outlined some of those questions in…

In 1977, Head Start began its first bilingual and bicultural programs. 40 years later, Head Start continues to build productive relationships with families by respecting and responding appropriately to the culture, language, values, and family structures of each family they work with. In fact, it’s a requirement. Immigration as a policy matter has been a…

Head Start prides itself on its ability to connect with and enhance the lives of children from families of varying backgrounds and opportunities.  The program’s services and resources are designed to foster stable family relationships, enhance children’s physical and emotional well-being, and establish an environment to develop strong cognitive skills. But I don’t have to tell…