Head Start Specialist: A Case Study

This article about Early Head Start Program gave me a deeper understanding of how the process of getting special services doesn’t start with the family acknowledgement, that they might have had a child with developmental delays. In most cases it really begins with the EHS initiative to educate families how to identify the disability. It is also dealing with providing families with basic needs, the lack of which has an enormous influence on the child physical and emotional development. In my opinion, the authorities made a good decision to create the agencies that can help to prevent or ease the disabilities, especially the children at high risk and coming from poor families.

Head Start is a federally funded, education development program that was created in 1965. The program provides education and services for eligible children from low-income families. Head Start 's philosophy focuses on the development of social-emotional, physical and mental health, nutrition, and working with families and the community and stated “low-income people should help plan and run their own programs” (p. 41-42). Head Start has truly expanded their resources over the years by providing a full school year for ages 3-6 years old and offering services such as health screenings, referrals, and social services (p. 42). Most importantly, each and every Head Start program must follow the federal Head Start Program Performace Standards that address all areas of development (p. 42). The program is truly committed to support low-income families and creating an education system that supports all aspects of the child.

I am currently a student at New Castle Junior, Senior High School. Throughout, the past 15 years of my life, I have been connected to Lawrence County Head Start Program. I attended Head Start for two years, at the age of 3 and 4. My teachers were Mrs. Lemmon and Mrs. Gardner. They taught me to to read, write, socialize, and use proper etiquette. I still remember the family style lunch setting in the classroom. During my enrollment, my mother volunteered her time with Head Start to be a part of the Head Start Policy Council. This led to a long standing relationship with Head Start. Today, my mother is on the Head Start Governing Board, as a former parent.

Head Start is one of the many programs started by President Lyndon B. Johnson to fight the war on poverty in which he signed the economic opportunity act of 1964 that opened the nation to Head Start and other programs that helped low income neighborhoods, According to President Johnson “We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors (Kelly, 2016). The head Start program started out as a summer program mainly run by the office of economic director Sargent Shriver. During the summer of 1964 the nation was confronted by a surplus. Shriver asked himself what would be the best way to use this money. He then set up a research team that developed a pie chart that showed great disparity against low income families especially children. He noticed that out of thirty million poor people in the nation half were children so he decided that he must come up with a program to help children. Mr. Shriver stated “It was clear that it was foolish to talk about a total war against poverty, if you were doing nothing about children” (Zigler, 1992). Head Start, this huge program that has been serving families for over fifty years was born out of a surplus. The main goal of Shriver was to solve three problems at once: He wanted use of public schools that were closed for the summer, he wanted teachers to be employed for the summer and he wanted to introduce poor children to the school environment

Head Start’s educational program is designed to meet each child’s individual needs. Children participate in various indoor and outdoor activities. Conjointly, children are introduced to the concepts of words and numbers. Activities such as play with colors and numbers, and measuring and counting are used to increase educational development. Head Start programs also offer

The three pieces of information that I learned from reviewing this information is that eighty percent of Head Start’s funding comes from the government while the other twenty percent is generated from its community. As for the Nebraska Rule 11, the parents must agree to two home visits each year while in the program. Lastly, ratios are to be lowered when one or more children in the group need additional adult assistance to fully participate in the program:

Poverty is an issue in this community. 30 percent of the residents in this community have an income below the poverty level compared to 21 percent in NYC (King, 2015). The old houses are not well maintained probably because of the lack of money. The issues with the houses and poverty go together, which affects the health status of the people in the community. The restaurants are mostly fast food and no fancy restaurants seem to be around. The clinics don’t have air conditioners probably because of their budgets. The phones people use aren’t the latest phones. Some of the phones seem to be issued by the government. A lot of the bodegas and deli stores accept food stamps.

One of the main difficulties low income individuals in urban spaces face is the access to affordable housing. Affordable housing “refers to housing intended for ‘low income’ or ‘very low income’ people” (Williams, 2003, p. 18). Housing is fundamental to the social and economic needs of people in the city. However, among the poor populations of this neighborhood, there is a shortage of affordable housing. The median household income in community board 4 neighborhoods is $27,000 (U.S. Census, 2013). Not only is the median household income almost below the national poverty line, but it is insufficient and cannot cover the rising costs of housing. Rent tremendously surpasses the financial budget of the low income residents in community board 4

helped educators create programs that will help parents grow as an individual and find opportunities. The Head start program is designed to leave no one left behind.

Living in impoverished neighborhoods can cause individuals to feel a sense of hopelessness that is brought on by the belief that their situation will never change. Early in life, the idea of the “American Dream” is fixed into one’s mind. The thought of being successful becomes an expectation for many American citizens. Residents of impoverished communities soon realize that success is a naïve assumption. This can incite mistrust and frustration for lower-class citizens. The traditional way of earning a living can leave individuals barely able

Prior to the 1970s the poor was relegated mostly in urban areas and to a degree rural areas, but Kneebone and Berube (2013) shows that the geography of the nation’s poor, however, changed markedly over the ensuing forty years, shifting decidedly away from smaller communities and toward these large metropolitan areas. According to the authors, in 1970 more than half of the country’s poor lived in metropolitan areas, but “by 2010, 15.3 million poor individuals —55 percent of the metropolitan poor population—lived in the suburbs, almost 2.6 million more than in the cities (12.8 million). Nationally, by the end of the 2000s one in three poor Americans lived in the suburbs, making them home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country” (Kneebone and Berube 2013, 18).

Once again, it is key to see how the construction of entire neighborhoods centered far from healthy supermarkets can contribute to the structural violence of deep poverty. A deep poverty that, along

For a broader view, the existence of entire swaths of a city or region that is exclusively inhabited by the poor cannot be simply explained away by poor financial decisions. In urban areas, these poverty-stricken districts are often the legacy of redlining and systematic oppression that was actively practiced until about 50 years ago. This legacy shapes perceptions of these districts as hopeless lost causes or lucrative business opportunities for gentrification, both attitudes ignoring the real human element that currently lives there. In addition, the separation of

Addressing problems in urban communities should remain first priority. Poverty has been growing faster in many cities throughout America. Residents of poor urban areas face many sets of challenges that our community developers are not addressing that can alleviate issues within urban communities. If we can come together to fight against poverty, we can call for revitalization, we need many more new strategies to tackle problems that aren’t contained. Many authors address poverty within suburban communities as well; with discussions of suburbanization- that poverty is moving from cities to suburban areas as if the major problem of poverty is no longer an urban problem. However, a large proportion of residents in urban cities are poor compared to poor residents living suburbs. In the article Sampson “Neighbourhood and community: collective efficacy and community safety” Sampson discusses collective efficacy and community safety he believes if residents within the community control behaviors happening in the community and persons’ in the community can control behavior for a safer environment. He says he mostly focuses on “policy-related ideas that are tied mainly to crime and public safety, and do not rely excessively on formal mechanisms of control for example, mass incarceration that may ultimately erode the foundations of social capital and lead to the de-legitimation of government institutions in disadvantaged communities.” Inner cities in the United States generally have

Place is an important factor in determining people’s health and health experiences (Karunanayake et al., 2015) and the neighborhood is vital because it directly impacts the lives of people living there. Saskatoon low income neighborhoods are significantly different in income status, education, employment status, and poverty in comparison to affluent neighborhoods as well as the rest of Saskatoon. The low income neighborhoods in Saskatoon have a high population of residents with an average household income of approximately $40,000 compared to about $84,000 for the entire city (Fuller, Engler-Stringer, & Muhajarine, 2015) (Cooper, 2014) and these neighborhoods are also referred to as the “core neighborhoods”.