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I. Introduction
Background and Rationale for Family Child Care Services in Head Start
Head Start is mandated to provide comprehensive child development, health, and early education services to children in poverty-with the goal of serving 1 million young children and their families by the year 2002 (Budget of the United States Government, 1998). Since its inception as a 6-week summer intervention program more than 33 years ago, Head Start has explored and incorporated different approaches to the structure and delivery of services through such innovative programs as Planned Variation, Follow Through, Head Start Transition, migrant and Native American programs, and more recently, Early Head Start and the Head Start/Child Care Partnerships (Zigler & Styfco, 1996). In addition, service variations are encouraged through local options that address the particular concerns and requirements of diverse community contexts (Phillips & Cabrera,1996). If standards of quality and integrity are maintained through the use of Head Start Program Performance Standards applied to all variations (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1996), then developing and maintaining alternatives to the traditional preschool classroom model enables Head Start to meet the needs of children and families across a wide range of circumstances.
The innovations in Head Start service delivery will need to be widely implemented in the twenty-first century. Head Start will be challenged to meet the needs of young children in a society that has undergone tremendous change since the time of those initial summer programs. The increase in the number of single-parent families in poverty, the increase in the incidence of violence, the rise in the number of children with disabilities, and the increase in the number of requests for programs sensitive to speakers of languages other than English all indicate a population at risk and in need of a wide array of support services and Head Start enrollment options. Today's preschoolers will be entering a sophisticated labor force with occupations that require not only advanced technical skills but also facility with problem solving strategies and the ability to deal with multiple expectations. Yet, in 1994 the school dropout rate among children from low-income families was five times as high as that for children from more affluent families (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 1997). One in four of America's children under the age of 6 lived in poverty in 1995 (defined as annual income under $15,141 for a family of four), and 12% of young children lived in extreme poverty (annual income under $7,571 for a family of four; National Center For Children in Poverty, 1996). Almost 70% of these children in poverty lived with parents who dropped out of high school (National Center for Children in Poverty, 1996).
The enactment of HR 3734, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (popularly known as welfare reform), will have an enormous impact on the lives of poor children and will change Head Start services in significant ways. It is estimated that 46% of the mothers with children enrolled in Head Start in 1996 received assistance through Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Although individual states are developing their own systems and variations in the implementation of the act, it is clear that welfare reform necessitates a sustained and intense examination of existing early care and education programs including Head Start, a process that is well under way.
Many families will move from unemployment to training, education, or work responsibilities that will require new child care arrangements. Their access to Head Start programs will be limited by time and transportation constraints. Currently, only about 20% of children served by Head Start are in programs with full-day services of 6 hours or more. Full-day services are available only to children with special needs or with parents who are employed or in job training. Work, school, or job training sites may be far from Head Start programs that are center based. Furthermore, many low-income children and families are not currently being served by Head Start for a variety of reasons. Children may be in patched-together child care arrangements with few opportunities for intellectual and social stimulation, in the care of older siblings, or even left alone. Welfare reform efforts, early intervention programs, and child care services must form partnerships to coordinate services to provide the best possible options for poor families.
The Evaluation of the Head Start Family Child Care Homes Demonstration
In 1992 the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF) funded a 3-year project designed to evaluate the delivery of Head Start services in family child care home settings and to compare those services with the services provided in traditional center classroom settings. The family child care home services were intended for 4-year-old children in the year prior to kindergarten. Eligibility was limited to parents who were either working, in school, or in a job training program. The primary purposes of the evaluation were to:
- Determine whether the full range of Head Start services (child development, education, and health) could be successfully provided in family child care homes;
- Assess the program implementation characteristics necessary to meet the Head Start Performance Standards in family child care homes;
- Compare the overall quality of family child care homes with that of center classrooms; and
- Determine whether the outcomes for children and parents in family child care homes were comparable to the outcomes for children and parents in center classrooms.
ACYF awarded family child care demonstration grants to 18 Head Start agencies to establish and implement family child care home programs for providing Head Start services. After an initial planning and start-up year, two cohorts of children (1993 and 1994) were randomly assigned to either family child care homes or center classrooms. The evaluation team measured program quality and adherence to Head Start Performance Standards in the two settings and conducted assessments of the children's cognitive, social-emotional, and physical development at the beginning and end of the Head Start year and in the middle of the kindergarten year. In addition, parent perspectives on the program and overall program satisfaction were probed.
Overview of Evaluation Findings
The main objective of the Head Start family child care demonstration project evaluation was to examine the efficacy of providing Head Start services through an alternative delivery system-family child care homes. The intent was to determine whether the quality of Head Start programs could be achieved and maintained in the family child care home setting and whether outcomes for children and parents in home and center settings were comparable. In brief, findings included the following:
- Measures comparing program quality in family child care homes and center classrooms revealed no significant differences. Although fall assessments of developmentally appropriate curricular practices were slightly lower for family child care homes compared with center classrooms, these differences were nonexistent by the spring. Family child care homes reduced their overall use of inappropriate practices, whereas center classrooms remained the same.
- No significant differences in caregiver and child interactions were observed in on-site assessments of the two settings. However, caregiver behaviors were more attentive and encouraging in family child care homes than in center classrooms on one scale of caregiver behavior.
- Children in the family child care homes performed as well as children in center classrooms on assessments of cognitive performance. Child outcome measures revealed few significant differences between the two settings. Program quality, regardless of setting, had a positive influence on all cognitive outcomes.
- Higher quality programs were associated with more positive child social-emotional and physical outcomes. Few differences between family child care homes and center classrooms were evident on most measures of social-emotional and physical outcomes.
- Parents were generally pleased with the family child care homes. Although some parents had been concerned initially that the family child care home setting would not provide the same quality of educational program, by the spring more than 90% of the parents reported being very happy with the family child care home setting.
- Children in both family child care homes and center classrooms performed equally well in kindergarten on measures of cognitive, social-emotional, and physical outcomes.
An important implication for the development of alternative delivery systems for Head Start emerged from these findings: Family child care homes are viable settings for the delivery of comprehensive Head Start services. Established measures of program performance, with a few minor variations, may be used to evaluate family child care homes with confidence and accuracy. Overall, the integrity of the Head Start program is well maintained in both the family child care home and the center classroom settings, as evidenced by the lack of setting differences for child outcome measures both at the posttest evaluation and at the kindergarten follow-up.
Framing the Issues in Alternative Delivery of Head Start Services
The development of exemplary early intervention programs is drawn in part from Head Start's history and research findings as well as issues of child care quality. These issues are grounded within a developmental framework which assumes that any discussion of early intervention has the children's optimal development as the primary goal.
Head Start
The history of Head Start spans more than 30 years. Drawing heavily upon assumptions about the malleability of development through environmental intervention (e.g., Bloom, 1964; Hunt, 1961), the original Head Start summer program was expected to produce permanent gains in intellectual functioning and other changes in the developmental trajectories of poor children by providing intensive intervention at critical stages of development. Although Head Start's commitment to comprehensive services-including a focus on improving social competence and involving parents-created a distinct form of intervention, the brief inoculation approach was not adequate to bring about the types of gains initially promoted. The beginning of the Head Start program was a disappointment for many, but the experience provided the opportunity to seriously examine the scope of early intervention and to begin to understand the limitations and potential benefits of various interventions (Zigler & Styfco, 1996). The introduction of Head Start paved the way for other early intervention efforts and initiated an extensive examination of the influence of a variety of strategies for improving the long-term developmental outcomes for low-income children (Barnett, 1995).
Head Start is now a very different program. The original commitment to increasing children's social competence and school readiness, the inclusion of parents in meaningful ways, and the provision of comprehensive services remain the core of the program. Services are now provided in the context of 9-month or full-year programs, and options in program design include home-based and center-based settings and local options designed to meet the needs of a particular community. With these variations, Head Start has substantially increased its clientele base.
The expansion of Head Start, achieved through a series of legislative initiatives, has not occurred without controversy. Questions about the effectiveness of Head Start programs have persisted since the initial evaluations, particularly with respect to long-term cognitive benefits (Bronfenbrenner, 1974). Despite persuasive findings about the influence of early intervention on other, noncognitive outcomes (Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, 1983; Barnett, 1995), the long-term benefits of early intervention for cognitive outcomes remain equivocal (Barnett, 1995). Much of the recent Head Start research (National Research Council, 1996; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1990, 1993, 1994) has focused on factors that contribute to quality programs.
Several interrelated issues will have a major influence on the future of the delivery of Head Start services. Welfare reform has profound consequences for the Head Start program. As parents are required to seek training or employment, the primarily half-day, 9-month structure of many Head Start programs must be modified to meet the changing needs of the population served. This challenge is coupled with a lack of quality child care options in the communities where many low-income families live. Already scarce, quality child care will become an ever more pressing need (Children's Defense Fund, 1996; Love, Schochet, & Meckstroth, 1996; Phillips, 1995). Head Start has the potential to meet some of this need by expanding its child care partnership options to more programs. Further, the national educational goal that every child will come to school ready to learn (National Educational Goals Panel, 1991) places even higher expectations on the quality and outcomes expected of Head Start programs.
Child Care
Attention to issues of quality child care, initiated through the dissemination of research findings in both the research and popular press, has increased in intensity over the last 5 years. Although a clear consensus has not emerged on how quality is to be defined and what variables need to be incorporated into the scope of the definition, there is general agreement that the focus of research on child care has moved away from the issue of whether child care in general is harmful or beneficial to young children to an examination of how child care quality interacts with child and family variables and ultimately influences child outcomes. In a review of research on child care quality and children's well-being, Love et al. (1996) concluded that clear evidence exists for "strong positive relationships between a variety of quality measures and various dimensions of children's development and well-being . . . [including] enhanced social skills, reduced behavior problems, increased cooperation and improved language." (p. iii)
Although some children from low-income families have access to high-quality child care through Head Start, other local, state, or federally supported programs, or through the use of subsidies in other settings, many poor children have little or no opportunity to experience superior child care. This problem concerns not only overall availability (Is child care available in the home community or near the parent's work location?), but overall quality (If child care is available, what is its quality?). Current estimates of the ratio of available child care to needs-even without taking quality into account-indicate that a severe shortage of child care will ensue as increasing numbers of parents move from welfare to work.
Family Child Care
Family child care is used by many families who seek child care services. Although most states have regulatory statutes of some type, many children are in unlicensed child care settings where little or no oversight of overall quality occurs. In addition, even in licensed family child care the regulation of settings and services is often inadequate (Kontos, Howes, Shinn, & Galinsky, 1995), though regulated care is still of higher quality and associated with more positive outcomes than unregulated care (Galinsky, Howes, & Kontos, 1995; Howes & Rubenstein, 1981; Kontos, 1994; Kontos et al., 1995). As with center classroom settings, family child care homes of higher quality are associated with positive outcomes (Love et al., 1996).
The delivery of Head Start programs in family child care homes was implemented previously through the Locally Designed Options in the Head Start Expansion in 1984 and as part of the Innovative Projects program in 1985 (Phillips & Cabrera, 1996; Zigler & Styfco, 1996). Neither a systematic examination of the delivery of Head Start services through family child care homes nor a comparison of center classroom-based programs with family child care homes has been conducted until now. As Head Start confronts the enormous challenges of providing quality, comprehensive services to low-income children and their families in an era of evolving community and family needs while striving to meet its goal to increase the number of families served, alternative delivery systems must be examined more closely.
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