Head Start Programs On the Front Line
Supporting at-risk families during the COVID-19 emergency
By Joel Ryan, Executive Director of Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP (WSA)
Recently I have been asked whether Head Start programs are open or closed during the coronavirus outbreak. The answer is that they are open and have been on the front lines throughout this public health crisis.
Head Start programs in Washington State are providing child care to essential workers, homeless children, children at risk of abuse or neglect, and other priority populations as needed. Puget Sound ESD’s Head Start and Early Head Start program, which operates from Tacoma to Seattle, has kept open many of their full and extended day sites. They are serving high-risk families and children of essential workers that have been enrolled in the program already and in need of child care. Several programs in the Seattle area are reopening child care options for essential workers and for the large number of homeless children Head Start supports.
Head Start Providing Modified Services
While most Head Start programs are no longer offering on-site care, staff are continuing to support at-risk children and families with modified services. Head Start staff are in constant contact with families to help them navigate resources in their community and are providing a set of curated educational activities and supports for their children to do at home.
They are going ‘high tech’ with interactive online events and educational apps that teachers can individualize for families, ‘medium-tech’ with emailed activities, resources, newsletters, and fun challenges for kids, and ‘low tech’ with food, packets, and art supplies dropped right at kids’ doors. I talked to a teacher yesterday who delivered packets and stood on the sidewalk to wave and talk to each of her students while they stayed on their stoop or window.
Here are just a few examples:
- Kitsap Community Resources Head Start in Bremerton is checking in twice a week with families and is working to support child development, family services, and their health care needs. They established a YouTube channel where parents and children can participate in virtual circle times and they are dropping off weekly packets, play dough, and paints.
- Lewis Clark Early Childhood Program in Eastern Washington is delivering food boxes and teachers have created Facebook pages to support learning activities and to provide tips to parents to help them prepare healthy meals.
- Children’s Home Society, which serves parts of King County and Walla Walla, continues to deliver food and education bags and is conducting virtual home visits via Skype and WhatsApp. Parents are also able to access mental health supports during this crisis while they are home with their children. They have started collecting donations and using those funds to provide gift cards to families that are desperate for help.
- Snohomish County Early Head Start is conducting Zoom meetings with families to check-in, working with food banks to conduct delivery, and partnering with county agencies to support housing needs such as rental assistance, connect families to employment, and helping student parents enroll and stay in college.
- Skagit/Islands Head Start is using Facebook and Call Em All to stay connected with families. Mental health consultants are using FaceTime and Zoom to meet with parents to try to lower the stress levels families are experiencing in their homes to keep children safe. Teachers and family service coordinators are checking in with families regularly and are delivering grocery and fuel cards to their most vulnerable families. They have also partnered with Catholic Community Services to deliver culturally appropriate food boxes to farmworker families.
I am so encouraged by the commitment and work of the dedicated Head Start staff who are continuing to find ways to support families during this worldwide emergency.
Head Start programs are not only “open” but they are truly on the front lines of supporting our most at-risk children and families — just when they are needed the most.
Head Start seeks additional funding for mental health and technology
Recently, Head Start programs were provided with much-needed funding from Congress through the CARES Act. The resources will help support programs during the COVID-19 crisis and to offer summer programming to children that will enroll in kindergarten next year. But we are finding that more funding is badly needed.
Based on a national survey of Head Start providers, the National Head Start Association (NHSA) is recommending to Congress and the White House that they consider making some additional modest investments in two targeted areas in the next relief package:
1) Support for mental health care for children, staff, and families
The National Head Start Association’s survey found that the Head Start field has identified an acute, increased need to address children’s mental health needs. In addition to the stress of COVID-19 and the economic instability it has created for families — and along with these factors, a rise in domestic violence — many caregivers have lost or decreased access to substance abuse and mental health services. Many children are spending more time in potentially increasingly harmful home settings. A huge number of child abuse and neglect reports come from schools and interacting with other caring adults outside of the home, and those opportunities for intervention have been lost due to isolation/stay-at-home measures at the very same time that risk for abuse and neglect has increased.
2) Technology to enable Head Start staff to provide remote services
Staff are working to stay in touch with families but don’t have the resources necessary to support their efforts. Many are working on phones or tablets, some with limited data available to use, but they need additional technology to maximize their remote services to families. We need to be able to make sure programs have the technological infrastructure they need to support families.
We are still at the very beginning of a long recovery from this COVID-19 crisis, but Head Start and Early Head Start programs are working hard to meet the challenge. Together, we are all advocating for Congress to address some of the critical needs our programs and families are experiencing.
