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Section V
1.0 Introduction to the Community Agency Substudy
1.1 Overview
Head Start is part of the network of agencies and organizations at the Federal, State, and local level that are linked together by the common purpose of serving low-income children and families. As Head Start seeks to expand into the 21(st)century, it continues efforts to forge new partnerships within the community, as required by the Program Performance Standards (45 CFR 1304.41). Meaningful partnerships are critical for the successful delivery of comprehensive services for Head Start families. While a majority of Head Start programs report that they collaborate with other agencies to provide services for families, a better understanding of the nature and quality of these partnerships is needed, particularly from the community service provider’s perspective.
Findings from the 1994 National Survey of Head Start Family Self-Sufficiency Initiatives (DeSantis & McLellan, 1997) suggested that most collaboration with community agencies was done informally, that is, without formal interagency agreements. Head Start program directors felt other community agencies may have been reluctant to enter into a written or formal commitment with them because resources were scarce and informal collaboration allowed for greater flexibility. The most successful collaborations appeared to have been influenced by organizational and community factors, namely, community partners who had sufficient staff available and who were members of a community that showed a commitment to networking, usually in the form of serving on task forces and community-wide advisory panels.
The network of agencies devoted to providing services for low-income children and families in any given Head Start community may vary on a number of important dimensions. Some may be large or small; weighted towards one particular type of service (e.g., family counseling) or diverse in services; closely knit, diffuse, or even contentious and competitive. Much can be learned through a description of the linkages among agencies and organizations. Network analysis, although a powerful methodological approach for investigating such linkages, is not without challenges. Defining a comprehensive universe of human service providers in a community (i.e., those with which Head Start might cooperate) can pose significant difficulties, since exhaustive listings of such providers are rare. Knowledge of the provider universe is important in determining whether, for example, a failure of Head Start to refer families to a particular service is a function of poor relations with the appropriate provider or whether such a service simply does not exist in the community.
As part of the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), a subset of 10 of the original 40 Head Start FACES programs participated in a systematic investigation designed to further understand the partnerships between Head Start and other service providers in their community. The Head Start programs participating in this sub-study were selected to represent the larger FACES sample, meaning that they were stratified on geography, rural and urban status, and minority membership. These 10 Head Start programs provided a list of the community service providers they had relationships with or to whom they referred families. From each program’s list of community agencies, 20 agencies (per program) were randomly selected for telephone interviews, for a total of 200 telephone interviews with community providers overall. Interviews sought to address the following research questions:
- What was the type of collaboration (formal or informal) with Head Start?
- What was the type, frequency, and quality of communications with Head Start?
- What was the frequency and method of client referrals between the agencies and Head Start?
- What exchanges of resources such as money or in-kind services occurred between agencies and Head Start?
- Were there joint planning or joint appointments or memberships on advisory boards or committees between agencies and Head Start?
Findings regarding the quality of the relationship between Head Start and community providers will be presented from the community providers’ perspective, as well as the community perception of the local Head Start program. Additional information addressing the nature and quality of the relationships between Head Start and community providers from the perspective of Head Start family service workers will also be included.
1.2 Organization of Section V: The Community Agency Substudy
Section V contains results from the FACES substudy of local community service providers in the service areas for 10 Head Start programs. Chapter 1.0 presents an overview of the Community Agency substudy. Chapter 2.0 describes the methodology of the study, including the sample selection, measures development, data collection procedures, and data analyses used. Chapter 3.0 presents the findings and summarizes the conclusions from the substudy.
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