How Head Start is Supporting First Responders and Families at Home
Head Start continues serving the whole child, the whole family, the whole community
The COVID-19 public health crisis is affecting every community across the country and Head Start is confronting unprecedented challenges with creativity, bravery, and compassion. Head Start has always been a beacon of hope for children, families, and communities in times of crisis, and now more than ever, programs across the country are stepping up as community leaders.
Some are providing care for the children of emergency personnel. Others are donating gloves, masks, and other supplies to local medical professionals. And all are finding new ways to support the changing needs of vulnerable families, such as by providing nutritious food, internet access, or household necessities that will help them weather this challenging experience.
As part of NHSA’s mission to uplift the Head Start community, we are sharing a few stories that illustrate the leadership Head Start has taken in supporting all families in their community, especially those of emergency personnel and essential workers, as they face the unprecedented challenges of this moment.
Opening doors for families on the frontlines
The coronavirus has changed our daily lives and closed many offices and businesses, but for the country’s essential workers, staying home is not an option. And many in the essential workforce still need safe, trusted, high-quality care for their children. Head Start programs like Community Action Head Start of Marion & Polk Counties in Oregon are stepping up to provide that care.
Like many Head Start programs, CAHS is serving their enrolled children and families through virtual learning and by delivering resources to families’ homes. However, they also saw the need in their community to provide in-person care for the children of emergency personnel and essential workers. That’s what they are doing in four classrooms, free of charge.
“We are currently serving 14 children in our emergency child care, with the interest growing so quickly that we increased our available slots from 30 to 36, which is the maximum allowed for the age groups we are serving in the four classrooms,” Head Start and Early Head Start Director Eva Pignotti wrote to NHSA.
While the children are safe, getting nutritious meals, and learning, their parents are hard at work caring for others. “Of our current 14 children, 10 are the children of health care workers and 4 are the children of essential workers. First responders are the highest priority, followed by health care workers, then other essential workers,” Pignotti explained.
The staff who are working on-site at Community Action of Marion and Polk Counties are receiving increased pay to reflect the added risk to their health they’re taking on in order to provide care. “We have 16 staff working in these four classrooms, plus a supervisor and two cooks preparing meals in our commercial kitchen,” Pignotti explained.
Pignotti expressed the gratitude and trust from families who depend on Community Action Head Start’s care to go to work.
“I think the families most appreciate knowing their children are safe in the care of a long-trusted organization like ours.
Some of the families being served had their children enrolled in our Head Start or Early Head Start program prior to the closure of schools and child care centers by our governor, so the trust is already there.”
Utilizing existing infrastructure to support the broader community
In Vancouver, Washington, another Head Start program is supporting its broader community in creative ways. Educational Opportunities for Children and Families (EOCF) has also transitioned to supporting their Head Start families remotely with phone calls, videos, online engagement, weekly educational packet drop-offs, and food distribution. In addition, they are partnering with their local school district to provide facilities, technical assistance, and classroom resources for emergency child care for first responders in the community.
In EOCF’s community, in order to provide care for emergency personnel as well as create jobs for the local school district’s hourly workers during school closures, community members developed an emergency child care program called Camp Evergreen. Evergreen is providing free child care for children from 2.5 years old to age 12. The 2.5–to 5-year-old children are being cared for in an EOCF classroom in the elementary school where Camp Evergreen is being housed. “The classroom was already set up,” Rekah Strong, EOCF’s Executive Director explained. “We allowed them to use our supplies that can be easily disinfected, so they’re using our mats and soft materials like teddy bears–all things that can be easily washed.”
EOCF’s education and family services director and education managers are also providing curriculum support to staff running Evergreen, who are new to running a child care program.
Donating extra supplies to medical professionals
On top of supporting Head Start families from afar and lending a helping hand to Camp Evergreen to support the families of emergency personnel, EOCF has donated supplies to medical professionals. “We have 28 sites,” Strong explained, “and our facilities workers went around to all of them and collected supplies from the first aid kits–face masks, gloves, anything we thought would be useful to health care professionals right now.”
“One of our local hospitals has an African American-affinity group that has been really supportive of our program. They fundraise for us, they come out and build playgrounds, clean classrooms for us, so we were thinking about how we can support them right now,” Strong said. “We were able to box all those supplies up and get them to them. They were so appreciative, so gracious in receiving them.”
Although the COVID-19 crisis has brought a great deal of uncertainty and forced us to distance ourselves from one another physically, Head Start programs like Community Action of Marion and Polk Counties and Educational Opportunities for Children and Families show us that our sense of community is stronger than ever. Thanks to the incredible dedication of Head Start programs like these, not only are Head Start families continuing to receive the educational support and resources they need, but larger communities are coming together to support one another.
