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

Reaching Out to Kith and Kin Caregivers in Early Head Start

Although young children's care before they enter school influences school readiness in important ways, the quality of care provided in different settings can vary widely. Low-income families tend to rely heavily on care provided by family, friends, and neighbors—"kith and kin" caregivers—especially for their infants and toddlers.

In 2004, the Head Start Bureau funded 23 Early Head Start programs to participate in the Enhanced Home Visiting Pilot Project, an initiative to develop and implement strategies for improving the quality of infant-toddler child care provided by kith and kin caregivers of Early Head Start children. Mathematica with its subcontractor, the Urban Institute, conducted an evaluation of the pilot project. Designed to be descriptive, the evaluation focused on learning about program operations and service delivery strategies, rather than assessing the pilot's effects on child care quality and children's outcomes. The evaluation:

• Learned about the characteristics and needs of kith and kin caregivers and the families that rely on them for child care
• Identified promising program models for reaching out to caregivers and supporting them in providing good-quality infant-toddler care
• Identified implementation strategies and challenges
• Documented the quality of care provided by caregivers participating in the pilot project
• Identified and disseminated lessons learned

The evaluation collected and analyzed information from three main sources: (1) interviews and focus groups conducted during two rounds of site visits to pilot sites (summer 2005 and spring 2006), (2) a management information system designed for use by the pilot sites, and (3) observational assessments of the quality of the caregiving environments and child-caregiver interactions.

Publications

"Strategies for Supporting Quality in Kith and Kin Child Care: Findings from the Early Head Start Enhanced Home Visiting Pilot Evaluation" (July 2006)
"Reaching Out to Kith and Kin Caregivers in Early Head Start.” Trends in Family Programs and Policy, Issue Brief #2 (April 2006)
"The Enhanced Home Visiting Pilot Project: How Early Head Start Programs Are Reaching Out to Kith and Kin Caregivers” (January 2006)