The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) has released a guide detailing how to forge much-needed collaborations with Head Start.
As a follow-up to last year’s report “Head Start-College Partnerships as a Strategy for Promoting Family Economic Success: A Study of Benefits, Challenges, and Promising Programs,” IWPR has released a guide outlining how to evaluate the benefits a Head Start program brings to a campus and how to initiate such collaborations.
“We felt partnerships between these two systems can serve a lot of different priorities and can bring benefits to both Head Start programs, to higher education institutions and most importantly to families,” said IWPR study director Lindsey Reichlin Cruse. “The resource we developed is an attempt to help colleges think through, ‘What do we need? What do families need who are enrolled on our campus? How might collaboration with local Head Start providers help meet some of those needs?’”
The step-by-step guide, “Head Start-College Partnership to Promote Student Parent Family Success: A Roadmap to Guide Collaboration,” noted that access to affordable, quality childcare and learning opportunities is essential for student parents as they pursue college to improve their life opportunities. Approximately 1.8 million student parents with children under the age of six are income eligible for Head Start, a federally funded program that provides comprehensive early childhood education, health, nutrition and parent services to low income families.
Reichlin Cruse said institutions need direction on how to start conversations with Head Start providers. Last year’s report documented the presence of Head Start partnerships around the country and evaluated the rewards and challenges of such collaborations.
“We were able to use that information in providing keys for success and things to avoid to put this guide together,” Reichlin Cruse said. “We took a lot of the lessons that were shared with us from partnership leaders and staff as well as lessons that we gleaned from their origin stories. We asked a lot of questions about how they started and how they’ve managed that partnership over time.”
IWPR asserted that Head Start can be a crucial component in persistence and completion for student parents, whether it’s peace of mind, quality services, access to healthcare or wrap around supports.
