Services

• Early Learning: Teachers facilitate individualized learning to promote children’s readiness for school and beyond. Through planned and spontaneous instruction, relationships with adults, and play, children grow in language and literacy, understanding of early math and science concepts, and social and emotional development.
• Health: Children receive health and development screenings, nutritious meals, and oral health and mental health support. Programs connect families with medical, dental, and mental health services, and ensure that children are receiving the services they need.
• Family well-being: Parents and families are supported in achieving their own goals, such as housing stability, continued education, and financial security. Programs support and strengthen parent-child relationships and engage families around children’s learning and development.

Administration

Local Head Start services are delivered by about 1,700 public and private nonprofit and for-profit agencies. Head Start agencies design services for children and families that meet the needs of their local community and follow the Head Start Program Performance Standards. These agencies receive grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), that are administered by the Office of Head Start (OHS). Some local communities and states contribute additional funding to expand Head Start and Early Head Start services to include more children within their communities.

OHS provides oversight to the agencies that operate Head Start programs. OHS also offers federal policy direction and a training and technical assistance system to assist grant recipients in providing comprehensive services to eligible young children and their families.

Expected Goals

The Head Start program’s authorizing purpose is to promote the school readiness of young children. School readiness means children are prepared for school, families are supporting their children’s learning, and schools are ready as children transition into kindergarten.

Brief History of the Program

The Head Start program was founded as part of the War on Poverty under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Sargent Shriver led a panel of experts to develop a comprehensive child development program that would help communities meet the needs of disadvantaged preschool children. The result was Project Head Start. Since then, the Head Start program has grown from an eight-week demonstration project in 1965 to include full-day and full-year services and numerous program options. Head Start programs have served over 38 million children and their families in urban and rural areas in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories.

Applicable Laws/Statutes

The Head Start program was last reauthorized under the Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007 with several provisions to strengthen Head Start quality. These include alignment of Head Start school readiness goals with state early learning standards, higher qualifications for the Head Start teaching workforce, State Advisory Councils on Early Care and Education in every state, and increased program monitoring, including a review of child outcomes and annual financial audits.

Children and Families Served in the 2022-2023 Program Year

Overall, Head Start programs enrolled 827,572 children in the 2022-2023 program year. This included:

• 542,170 Head Start children aged 3 and over
• 245,715 Early Head Start infants and toddlers and 12,851 pregnant women
• 21,871 American Indian and Alaska Native children (2021-2022 program year)
• 27,126 children through Migrant and Seasonal Head Start, a birth to 5 program (2021-2022 program year)

Programs provided services to children in every U.S. state and territory and in over 155 tribal communities, including 111,537 children eligible to receive early intervention or special education services, 27,047 children in foster care, and 51,697 families experiencing homelessness.