ACF OPRE CORE - Publications and Reports - Reaching Out to Families: Head Start Recruitment and Enrollment Practices

1.0 Project Overview

This report describes the results of a project that examined the Head Start recruitment and enrollment efforts from a variety of perspectives. The central purpose of the study was to determine the feasibility and utility of obtaining information from secondary analyses of national and local data and from primary data collection efforts regarding 1) the procedures that Head Start programs employed in the recruitment and enrollment of families and children, 2) the characteristics of eligible families, and 3) reasons why some families with Head Start-eligible children chose not to enroll their children in the program. The findings of this study should facilitate current practice and future research on the recruitment and enrollment of the families most in need of Head Start Services.

1.1 Rationale for the Study

The National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) has reported that the number of children living in poverty doubled between 1978 and 1993. Although they have recognized the reported decline in the child poverty rate over the second half of the 1990’s (DHHS, 2000; NCCP, 1999), they pointed out that the child poverty rates during that period were still greater than during any year between 1975 and 1990 (NCCP, 1998). NCCP also noted that the rate of poverty for children under the age of six was greater than the poverty rate for any other age group (1999). According to the 1998 Current Population Survey, approximately 20% (1.6 million) of children aged 3 and 4 were living in poverty during 1998. National data also suggested that since 1975 there had been no real reduction in the number of families who were above, but still near, the poverty line. By the end of the decade, approximately 40% of all children (0 to 5 years) in the United States were at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Leval (DHHS, 2000; NCCP, 2000).

Head Start has a goal to serve one million children by the year 2002; an ambitious goal that still has the program reaching significantly fewer than the estimated population of 1.6 million eligible 3- and 4-year-old children. The program has been successful in efforts to increase the number of children served by its various programs, reaching over 850,000 in FY1999, and it continues to expand enrollment. However, the program’s ability to reach its goal in an age of changing social demands may be compromised without up-to-date information on eligible families. Recent Head Start research efforts inform us about the families Head Start is serving, but prompt Head Start program staff, administrators, and expert observers, including the Advisory Committee on Head Start Research and Evaluation (1999) to ask new questions: Who are the eligible families and children that are missing from Head Start? How are these families and children different from enrolled families? What can be done so all eligible children needing services can benefit from the program?

These questions become more relevant as family participation in Head Start is likely affected by recent welfare reform activities. Welfare reform impacts Head Start-eligible families in several ways. First, as welfare reform requirements (i.e., finding work or suitable training opportunities) become more daunting, some families need a partner like Head Start to assist them in accessing complementary community resources (i.e., secure, quality, and affordable full-time care for their young children) or to provide these resources when they are not adequate or available in the community. Unfortunately, some families have found that, in their efforts to cope with the demands of welfare reform, Head Start simply did not provide services that met their needs. The alternative was to seek services from other care providers. Second, many families who needed services and wanted Head Start found that the successes of welfare reform (i.e., employment, increased income) also left them ineligible for Head Start and other services that use the Federal Poverty Level as a marker for eligibility. Of course, there are many eligible families who cope successfully on their own, as well as families that are very desperate for help but just do not know what Head Start offers them. This last group may represent the most needy families: those lacking the knowledge and the skills to get needed assistance. If a significant portion of the families missing out on the Head Start experience are in this group, then Head Start may decide to rethink outreach and recruitment activities, for these are the families with the potential to benefit the most from enrollment in the program.

Local Head Start programs continually strive to link with families in their communities as they seek to meet their enrollment objectives. Sometimes programs are successful in this effort, sometimes they are not. However, identifying the characteristics of eligible families who are not enrolled in Head Start is an important step in building better links. This group consists of four types of families. These are:

Families who are unaware of the program and/or were never actively recruited to Head Start;
Families who are aware of the program and have possibly been recruited to Head Start, but never enroll;
Families who enroll in Head Start but never attend; and
Families who enroll and begin the program, but then drop out early (during the first month) in the program year.

Information from this study will have great value for the evaluation of local recruitment procedures and for proposing next steps for Head Start in updating the types of services it may need to offer if families who are not currently using Head Start are successfully recruited into the program.

1.2 Description of the Project

This project involved several independent study activities. First, existing data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) and three additional large-scale extant databases were examined to determine what information might be available regarding numbers and characteristics of children eligible for Head Start and, to the degree possible, compare family characteristics of enrolled and non-enrolled eligible children. Second, a primary data collection in the fall of 1999 consisted of focus groups at nine Head Start program sites with staff from 11 Head Start programs, and reviews of recruitment records and waiting lists from the nine Head Start programs sites. As well, focus groups with parents of children who were Head Start-eligible but not enrolled were completed in three communities. Based on what was learned from the fall data collection, individual interviews were completed with a total of nine parents of eligible, non-enrolled children in two communities during the spring of 2000.

1.2.1 Exploration of Existing Databases.

The FACES databases contained several sources of relevant information for this study. These included:

Exit interviews conducted with parents of children who dropped out of Head Start during the study,
Interviews with Social Service Coordinators and Family Service Workers about recruitment and enrollment efforts,
Interviews with parents of currently enrolled Head Start children, and
Interviews with community agency staff, focusing on collaboration with Head Start and service provision to low-income families.

In addition, three national datasets were re-examined to provide descriptive information on families with eligible children who were either enrolled or not enrolled in Head Start. These were the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), and the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID). Data from these analyses are presented in Chapter 2, except for the findings from the community agency staff interviews, which are located in Chapter 3.

1.2.2 Fall, 1999 Data Collection.

A set of eleven programs that participated in FACES was invited to participate in a data collection effort that included focus groups with recruitment and enrollment staff. Nine of those programs provided a set of recruitment and enrollment records for review. These records included information for three groups of children: 1) those who completed the recruitment process but never attended Head Start; 2) those who completed the enrollment process and began attending Head Start in the fall but left before October; and 3) those currently attending Head Start. In addition, four program communities were scheduled for focus groups with parents of Head Start-eligible children who were not enrolled in the program. Parent focus groups were conducted in three of those sites (in the fourth rural site, a sufficient number of such parents could not be recruited for the group).

The selection of individual Head Start programs was based on overall program size and representation of the original FACES sampling strata: region, urbanicity, and minority membership. At least one urban and one rural Head Start program in the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West was selected. At each of nine locations, two focus groups with staff were completed. The first involved administrative staff, and the second included field staff who were involved in recruitment and enrollment activities. Two rural programs in the Midwest and two urban programs in the West were combined, resulting in a total of eleven programs participating in the nine sets of focus groups. The use of FACES program sites had the benefit of involving local programs that were already comfortable with the project staff as well as providing a rich base of information from FACES on the families actually using these programs. All invited programs agreed to participate.

The focus groups with staff covered program recruitment practices (timing and nature of community outreach approaches, description of recruitment staff, overlap of service areas, safety policies, cultural considerations, and referral agency contacts), program enrollment activities (timing of family contact, prioritization of risk factors, use of waiting lists, and enrollment notification), and retention policies and practices. The record reviews provided data on timing of initial contacts, demographics, and risk factors identified for children in the targeted groups. Finally, the parent focus groups provided information on non-enrolled parents’ knowledge of the Head Start program, the reasons for not enrolling their children, and their general views on local preschool programs, including Head Start. The information from each of these data sources is provided in Chapter 3.

1.2.3 Spring, 2000 Data Collection.

In two of the communities where Head Start parent focus groups were scheduled, a total of nine individual interviews was completed in the spring of 2000 with parents of Head Start-eligible children who were not enrolled in the program. The purpose of these interviews was to test the feasibility of identifying and contacting such families independent of the Head Start program and to test a preliminary version of a parent interview protocol addressing the following issues:

What are the characteristics of eligible, non-enrolled families?
What types of child care are these families currently using?
What do these families know about Head Start?
Why do these families not use Head Start?
Are there things that Head Start could do that would increase the likelihood they would enroll in the program?
What personal or environmental risk factors are the families facing?

The results of these interviews are contained in Chapter 3.

1.3 Feasibility Assessment.

One of the central goals of the analyses and data collection efforts in this study was an to assess the feasibility of locating and recruiting families with Head Start-eligible children who, for one reason or another, were not enrolled in the program. In Chapter 3, several issues related to such an effort are reviewed, including waiting lists, data collection from non-participant families, and the use of referrals and recommendations from local agency contacts.

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