Early Childhood Topics

• Head Start/Early Head Start
• Early Care & Education Settings
• Home Visiting
• Early Childhood Education Practices
• Studying Children in a Multicultural Society
• Clients

Evaluating the Early Head Start for Family Child Care Project

The Early Head Start for Family Child Care project, a joint collaboration between the Offices of Head Start and Child Care, both within the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, developed and piloted strategies for building Early Head Start–family child care partnerships. These partnerships were designed to increase both the amount of full-day and full-year child care available for families enrolled in Early Head Start and the quality of family child care.

ZERO TO THREE, with support from Mathematica, developed a framework to guide the project’s implementation. To test the framework’s feasibility, ZERO TO THREE selected 22 partnership teams to participate in a 10-month demonstration. The partnership teams included an Early Head Start grantee funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5) and a child care partner (such as a child care resource and referral agency). A child care partnership coordinator, or project consultant, supported each partnership team.

ZERO TO THREE also partnered with Mathematica to evaluate the project. The evaluation team used the project framework to guide the evaluation. The evaluation aimed to:

• Document the characteristics of the grantees, their child care partners, the child care partnership coordinators, and the communities in which they operate
  
• Describe how the grantees and their child care partners implemented the framework at the local and state levels, including how much progress they made toward their targeted outcomes
  
• Identify the types of partnerships formed to support collaboration between Early Head Start grantees and family child care providers
  
• Assess the sustainability of the partnerships formed through the project
  
• Highlight lessons learned about collaborations designed to create more seamless service delivery for families

The study relied on four data sources: (1) eight months of administrative data from the project’s web-based system; (2) telephone interviews with representatives from 13 partnerships teams; (3) descriptive quality indicators and Head Start Program Information Report (PIR) data about family child care providers implementing Early Head Start in family child care; and (4) project documents, including the teams’ applications and work plans.

Publications

“Building Partnerships Between Early Head Start Grantees and Family Child Care Providers: Lessons from the Early Head Start for Family Child Care Project” (December 2011)  
“The Early Head Start for Family Child Care Project: Profiles of the Partnership Teams” (November 2011)