Head Start Connects: Individualizing and Connecting Families to Comprehensive Family Support Services

2018 - 2023

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Project Overview

Since its origins, Head Start has emphasized delivering comprehensive services that align with children and families’ diverse strengths and needs. A strength of Head Start’s approach has been its dual focus on offering comprehensive services that support both children and their families to improve child development in the long-term: coupling early care and education, nutrition, health, and social supports for children with parenting, self-sufficiency, health/mental health, and leadership services for parents. However, despite significant knowledge of which services Head Start programs offer to families, little is known about how programs coordinate the provision of these services.

The Head Start Connects project aims to generate knowledge about the processes through which Head Start programs coordinate the provision of family support services that are responsive to families’ specific needs. Coordination encompasses many processes, including:

  • assessing the needs of communities and families
  • establishing partnerships with service providers
  • building in-house capacity for service provision
  • linking families to appropriate services and providers based on identified needs
  • tracking service uptake
  • continually assessing the responsiveness of the provided services
  • reassessing outstanding service needs

Under this contract, MDRC and its partners - the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (NORC) and MEF Associates — will conduct a literature review, develop of a theory of change model, consult with experts, and design and execute a small set of case studies and a large-scale descriptive study on the processes related to coordinating and tailoring family support services in Head Start.

The points of contact are Sarah Blankenship and Krystal Bichay-Awadalla.

The case studies conducted under this project are registered on Open Science Framework under the title Head Start Connects: Individualizing and Connecting Families to Comprehensive Family Support Services -- Case Studies

Information collections related to the case studies conducted under this project have been reviewed and approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under OMB #0970-0538. Related materials are available on at the Head Start Connects  Information collection page on RegInfo.gov.

The most currently approved document are accessible by clicking on the ICR Ref. No. with the most recent conclusion date. To access the information collections (E.g. interviews, surveys, protocols), click on View Information Collection (IC) List. Click on View Supporting Statement and Other Documents to access other supplementary documents.

Related Resources

Theory of change about how the coordination of family support services in Head Start programs is thought to result in improved outcomes for the whole family.

Explore how six Head Start sites participating in the Head Start Connects case studies adapted their coordination of family support services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn strategies Head Start programs use to coordinate family support services and processes to ensure alignment with individual family needs and well-being.

The Head Start Connects project is conducting research to understand how Head Start and Early Head Start programs coordinate family support services for parents and guardians.