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IV. EARLY IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES
The fall 1997 site visits offered an opportunity to learn about the challenges that Early Head Start programs faced in their early phases. The visits were conducted at the end of the second year of program funding and the first year of serving families. Some programs were just getting off the ground, while others were adding Early Head Start to an existing Head Start program or making a transition from previous operations as a CCDP or a Parent Child Center. All the programs faced new challenges, but they also exhibited key strengths and demonstrated some early successes.
A. EARLY CHALLENGES
In examining the first year that the 17 research programs served families, we identified a number of challenges that several programs faced. Some challenges reflect the programs’ early stage of implementation. Others reflect the difficulties associated with transitioning to a new program model. In addition, the programs were struggling to adjust to new realities and family needs in the wake of welfare reform.
1. Reaching and Maintaining Full Enrollment Was Challenging for Some Programs.
For some programs, the research eligibility criteria or the random assignment process made it harder to recruit families, and the need to recruit twice as many families made it harder to meet the deadline for full enrollment. Beyond the initial difficulties in recruitment, some of the programs had a hard time retaining families, and several had lost some families by the time of the site visits. The enrollment turnover in these programs had a number of causes: (1) some families did not fully understand the commitment required and did not want to participate at the expected levels, or they wanted different services than those offered by the program; (2) families moved out of the area; (3) contact with families lapsed during periods of staff turnover; and (4) other commitments or family stresses interfered with the ability of families to participate.
2. The Transition to Providing Child-Focused Services Was Challenging for Some Programs with a History of Providing Family Support Services and Programs Whose Original Service Plans Were Family-Focused.
Staff of several programs, some of which were former CCDPs, initially believed that the best way to improve children’s development was to address parents’ problems and improve their parenting skills, so program services centered on parents. However, during the first year of program operations, the Head Start Bureau directed all Early Head Start programs to focus more on children and urged them to place priority on enhancing child development during home visits and on helping families arrange high-quality child care. This guidance required the staff in these programs to think and work in new ways, which some staff members resisted.
3. Ensuring High-Quality Child Care for Families Who Need It Posed a Substantial Challenge for Most of the Programs.
Families’ needs for child care were increasing under welfare reform, and many families needed child care beyond the hours that center-based Early Head Start care was available. At the time of our site visits, the majority of the home-based and mixed-approach programs were not doing much to help these families find high-quality child care arrangements (beyond what the programs offered). Initially, the requirement that programs oversee the quality of care received by Early Head Start children in community child care settings was not clear to some programs. Plans for providing this oversight were being developed at the time of the site visits.
Programs that did not provide child care had to work with community providers to arrange care for program children. In many areas, program staff members reported that the quantity and quality of child care available for infants and toddlers in the community was inadequate. State regulations and child care subsidy levels set a low threshold for child care quality, and only programs with resources to supplement subsidies could provide higher-quality care.
Assessing and monitoring community child care arrangements also posed challenges. In programs where many children were cared for by relatives or neighbors, staff members either did not know much about children’s child care arrangements or viewed assessing and monitoring the arrangements as inappropriate. In any case, whether the child care provider is a relative or a child care center, assessing and monitoring the quality of the care provided requires the cooperation of the provider. It also requires considerable staff resources. For some programs, assessing and monitoring child care, in addition to completing home visits and other activities, stretched staff resources beyond their limits.
Staff turnover in community child care settings can also pose a significant challenge to enhancing the quality of community child care through staff development. Often the best strategy (and one chosen by several of the Early Head Start research programs) is to provide training and technical assistance to caregivers, because lowering child-staff ratios and reducing group sizes, for example, requires substantial financial resources. Investments in caregiver training, however, may not be very effective in increasing child care quality if the caregivers who receive the training leave their jobs after a short time.
4. A Number of Programs Were Not Successful in Engaging the Majority of Parents and Children in the Required Group Socialization Activities.
Most of the programs offering home-based services were offering regular group socialization activities for parents and children in fall 1997. However, finding times when parents were available to attend group socialization activities was challenging for many programs. Many parents faced other demands on their time, and attending group socialization activities was not their highest priority. In one program, relying on home visitors to make sure parents received information about group socialization activities caused parents to be informed inconsistently about the group activities. Some programs found that it took a while for some parents to feel comfortable in group activities.
5. Meeting the Required Schedule of Weekly Home Visits for Families Receiving Services Through the Home-Based Option Was Challenging for Most Programs.
Welfare reform now requires many low-income parents to work or participate in work-related activities, so many parents had less time available to meet with home visitors. Moreover, the welfare time limits and the clear message that welfare recipients must work caused many parents to give priority to looking for jobs and working rather than participating in program activities, including home visits. To address this issue, some programs attempted to schedule more home visits during evening hours, after parents had returned from work. However, some home visitors found that parents and children were often too tired at the end of the day and too busy preparing for the next day’s activities to participate satisfactorily.
Beyond the demands of welfare reform, the chaotic, disorganized lives of some families made it difficult for them to keep appointments for home visits. Home visitors often tried to reschedule missed visits but could not always fit makeup visits into their schedules.
6. Adding Early Head Start to Head Start Services Was a Challenging Adjustment for Some Programs.
Staff members who moved from Head Start to Early Head Start had to adjust to new responsibilities. Staff accustomed to serving families with older children needed to shift their focus to the special needs of families with infants and toddlers. When training for Early Head Start and Head Start staff was integrated, however, the activities sometimes appeared to lack a focus on infants and toddlers.
Moving from Head Start to Early Head Start also required adjustments to work schedules and work activities. Some staff members making the shift did not like the change from a part-year to a full-year schedule that came with joining Early Head Start. Other staff members found caring for infants to be harder work than they expected and transferred back to Head Start.
Adding Early Head Start to Head Start was not always difficult, but when there were staffing or administrative problems within the Head Start program, and Early Head Start was perceived as competing for resources, tensions sometimes arose among staff members. Lack of communication between Early Head Start and Head Start staff members also caused difficulty in some programs.
7. Home Visitors and Center Teachers in Many of the Programs Expressed Dissatisfaction with Their Wages.
Consistent with other programs, the Early Head Start programs paid low wages to these staff members. The average hourly wage of $9.77 amounts to an annual salary of about $20,000, not far above the poverty level. Many staff members, though largely satisfied with their jobs, felt that their wages were inadequate.
Wages at this level in child care programs have been associated with high staff turnover rates, which, not surprisingly, some of the research programs had suffered. Moreover, at least one program reported having difficulty filling open positions, because of the salaries they were offering.
8. Leadership Changes and Staff Turnover in Several Programs Created Staff Morale Problems and Disrupted Services to Families.
Improving staff morale and re-engaging families were important challenges for new staff members. Difficulties leading up to changes in program managers often resulted in low staff morale. When this happened in three of the research programs, the new program managers had to work with staff members to restore their confidence in the program’s leaders and rekindle their enthusiasm for their jobs.
In some of the four programs that experienced high rates of turnover in frontline workers, some families experienced disruptions in services. It was not always possible to replace staff members immediately, and the remaining staff members could not step in and do all the work of the ones that had left.
Many of the programs operate on the sound principle that effective work with families requires trusting relationships with parents. Staff turnover dissolved these bonds and compelled replacement staff members to rebuild them, even when programs were able to continue some level of services.
B. EARLY STRENGTHS AND SUCCESSES
Despite the challenges of implementing a new program in a changing environment, the Early Head Start research programs had made substantial progress by fall 1997 toward implementing the Early Head Start model as envisioned by program planners.
1. At the Time of the Site Visits, the Programs Were Increasing Their Focus on Child Development.
Many programs began with a strong child development component. Others with a history of focusing on family support services were making considerable progress in strengthening child development services, with help from training and technical assistance providers. In particular, home-based programs were encouraging home visitors to spend time on child development during visits, even when other family needs were pressing. In addition, training and technical assistance providers were helping home-based programs to take an active role in obtaining high-quality child care for families that needed it.
2. The Programs’ Operating Centers Maintained Low Child-Caregiver Ratios.
Most of the center-based and mixed-approach programs reported that they maintained child-caregiver ratios that met the Revised Head Start Performance Standards, and many also reported meeting the group size requirements. The child-caregiver ratio and group size requirements are set at levels that most experts consider to constitute a threshold for good-quality child care. For example, the group sizes and ratios specified in the Revised Head Start Performance Standards are within the range required for accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Young Children for infants, and better than the accreditation standards for toddlers. Several of the EHS centers had received or were in the process of obtaining NAEYC accreditation in fall 1997.
3. The Programs Included a Strong Focus on Helping Families Obtain Physical and Mental Health Services.
Many of the research programs had developed strong partnerships with providers of health care services to families. With the help of their partners, many programs provided health education, health screenings, health care, and counseling.
4. Many Research Programs Were Making Special Efforts to Involve Fathers in the Lives of Their Children and in the Early Head Start Program.
Many programs not only encouraged fathers to be involved in their children’s lives and to participate in program activities, but also designed special activities for them. Although the levels of participation by fathers were often low, many programs had succeeded in engaging a core group of fathers in the special activities. These fathers may be able to help the programs build interest among other fathers and increase levels of participation in the future.
5. All Programs Offered Substantial Staff Training and Support to Staff Members.
The research programs, especially home-based and mixed-approach programs, hired well-educated staff members, and all of the programs provided substantial training, supervision, and support for frontline staff members. Most of the programs reported that staff members received preservice orientation and training, and in some programs, the preservice training was extensive. All programs provided regular staff in-service training, either in group sessions or through individual observation and feedback.
All programs also reported convening regular staff meetings, usually weekly, in which supervisors provided group supervision and support. These meetings also gave staff members opportunities to provide and receive peer support. Program leaders also worked with staff individually to help them review their work and address difficult issues as they arose.
6. Staff Members Expressed a Strong Commitment to Their Program During the Site Visits and in the Staff Survey.
The research programs have succeeded in creating pleasant and supportive work environments and in building committed staffs that work very hard to accomplish program goals. It appears that the investments that programs made in staff development and the resources they devote to supporting frontline staff members enable them to foster staff commitment despite the low wages they pay.
The supportive work environments created by the research programs are also reflected in the modest proportion of staff members who reported that their job was consistently stressful. Despite the high levels of needs and difficult circumstances of the families served by the programs and the challenges of serving such families, only about one-fourth of staff members reported that their job was always or usually stressful.
7. The Early Head Start Research Programs Had All Forged Strong Community Partnerships and Were Participating Actively in Community Collaborative Groups.
All the programs had community partners and worked with other agencies to help meet families’ needs. Staff members at all levels often collaborated with workers in other agencies to coordinate services for families.
Early Head Start staff members often played leadership roles in community collaborative groups. In addition, some programs involved all staff members in broader collaborative activities by making them responsible for attending meetings, serving as liaisons, and sharing information with other Early Head Start staff members.
8. All the Early Head Start Research Programs Were Motivated by a Strong Desire to Improve Services to Children and Families.
Staff members’ desire to improve was very evident in discussions during site visits, and continuous improvement efforts were integral to most programs. Their willingness to engage in self-reflection and their receptiveness to feedback are likely to help them learn from their early experiences and adapt to changes as they serve low-income families and children.
C. SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS
The challenges and successes highlighted in this chapter are those that the research programs experienced in the initial phase of implementing Early Head Start services. The programs are continuing to grow and change, and based on site visits in late summer 1999, we will provide a report on the pathways they have followed in meeting the challenges of serving low-income families with infants and toddlers and adapting to changes in the needs of children and families, changes in their communities, and changes in their national and local policy context. This report will describe the pathways programs took to providing high-quality Early Head Start services.
Some aspects of the research programs’ early experiences were unique. Participation in the research sometimes made recruiting and enrolling families more difficult. In addition, because they were among the first programs funded, the research programs began before the revised Head Start Program Performance Standards were enacted and while program monitoring procedures and policy interpretations were being developed. Nevertheless, many of the challenges the research programs faced in their first year of serving families were not unique and may be encountered by other new Early Head Start programs in the future. The research programs’ early implementation experiences suggest several key areas in which some new Early Head Start programs may encounter difficulties and may benefit from training and technical assistance, including:
- Making transitions from providing other types of services, such as transitions from family-focused to child-focused services (for programs with a history of providing family support services) and transitions from serving preschool-age children to serving infants and toddlers
- Designing strategies for ensuring that program families receive high-quality child care (especially home-based programs)
- Completing home visits as frequently as desired
- Designing and conducting group socialization activities that meet families’ needs and fit in their schedules
- Fostering strong staff commitment and minimizing staff turnover
The work of the research programs and their local and national research partners suggests that discussions of goals, strategies, and expected outcomes (theories of change) can be useful to young programs, as well as researchers. The discussions so far have helped some program staff think systematically and critically about their goals and strategies. The discussions are also helping researchers identify the research programs’ priority outcomes and create analysis plans that focus on assessing impacts on specific outcomes in programs that are explicitly targeting them.
The research programs are leading the way, both as members of the first two waves of Early Head Start programs and as participants in the National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation project. As leaders, they are paving the way for new programs, sharing the lessons they have learned by engaging in a partnership with researchers that will enhance the relevance and usefulness of the evaluation research.
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