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Part 2: Home-Based Programs
Early Head Start Program Profile
Project EAGLE Early Head Start
Kansas City, Kansas
September 29 - October 1, 1996
The University of Kansas Medical Center's Child Development Unit operates an Early Head Start Program, called Project EAGLE, for 120 families in Kansas City, Kansas. The program serves ethnically diverse families, half of whom were receiving welfare cash assistance when they enrolled. Program staff members provide child and family development services primarily in weekly or biweekly home visits. The program has established collaborative agreements with several child care centers and family child care providers in the area to provide care for Project EAGLE children, and program staff provide ongoing training and technical assistance to center staff members and the family child care providers to ensure that Project EAGLE children receive high-quality child care. The child development services are designed to increase parents' responsiveness to their children, engage them in their children's development, and empower them to access the formal and social supports they need to create a better environment for their child.
OVERVIEW
The University of Kansas Medical Center's Child Development Unit operates Project EAGLE (Early Action and Guidance Leading to Empowerment) in Kansas City, Kansas. Project EAGLE began in 1989 as a Comprehensive Child Development Program (CCDP). As part of a university medical center, Project EAGLE benefits from support services the university provides and can gain access for families to a wide range of health services provided by the medical center when no other health care options are available.
Community Context. Project EAGLE serves families living in the poorest areas in Kansas City, Kansas. The community has problems that many urban areas have--including high levels of poverty, crime, and substance abuse--as well as a lack of needed services, most notably public transportation, child care, and housing. Community leaders are committed to improvement, and service providers and other community agencies have developed strong collaborations to address these problems.
Program Model. Project EAGLE is a home-based program. Each family receives weekly or biweekly home visits from a family support advocate, who provides child development and case management services. The program has continued providing the services it provided as a CCDP program, but its focus has shifted from serving families until the child is 5 years old to serving families only until the child is 3 years old, and it has begun to work more closely with Head Start to facilitate the child's transition into preschool.
Families. The families served by Project EAGLE are diverse. About half are African American, one-fifth are Hispanic, and the remainder are white or belong to other racial or ethnic groups. About one-third of the parents are teenagers, and only about one-fourth are married. One-third of the mothers were pregnant when they enrolled in the program. Nearly half were receiving welfare cash assistance when they enrolled.
Staffing. Project EAGLE has created a strong staff structure to support the work of the 11 family support advocates who work with families. Coordinators and specialists in the areas of early childhood education, family support services, self-sufficiency, and health care accompany family support advocates on home visits, conduct group and individual training and supervision, and build community partnerships. The program's associate director plans and oversees staff training, provides technical assistance to other community programs, and is also involved in building community partnerships. The program employs a coordinator and data control technician to maintain the program's management information system. The program director provides overall leadership to the staff and is a community leader who has played a key role in creating and maintaining collaboration among community agencies and programs.
RECRUITMENT AND ENROLLMENT
Program Eligibility. Project EAGLE serves families who live east of 78th Street in Kansas City (Wyandotte County), Kansas, have incomes at or below the federal poverty level, and include a pregnant woman or a child under 12 months old.
Recruiting Strategies. Project EAGLE staff members use multiple strategies to recruit families, including contacting relevant community agencies to encourage referrals, approaching families in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) and health department offices, making presentations to participants in school-based teenage parent programs, and knocking on the doors of families with young children living in housing projects. Many families were recruited at the WIC and health department offices.
Enrollment. Project EAGLE is funded to serve 120 families, 100 of whom will participate in the Early Head Start (EHS) evaluation research. (Some families are not eligible for the research because they participated in the CCDP program.) At the time of the site visit, 101 families were enrolled and actively participating in the program. Since Project EAGLE began providing Early Head Start services, 18 families who enrolled in the program have been removed from the rolls because they moved away, could not be located, or were not participating in program services.
When enrolling families in the program, staff members encourage fathers to be present. They explain fathers' roles and participation in the program and include them in the service profile. Staff members believe this has helped promote active participation by a large number of fathers.
Enrolled families bring a variety of strengths to the program--many have supportive extended families, are motivated to improve their situations, and love and want the best for their children. Fathers are present in more than one-third of families. Families also bring a range of needs, including transportation, housing, and family mental health services.
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Project EAGLE serves families living in the eastern half of Wyandotte County, which encompasses the poorest areas in Kansas City, Kansas. Part of the area is located inside the boundaries of the Bi-State Empowerment Zone. Kansas City, Kansas, is a community with a declining economic base and declining population. It has the problems that many urban areas have--including high levels of poverty, crime, and substance abuse. Few low-skilled jobs are available; most jobs have some technical skill requirements. The main employers in the area are telecommunications companies, the hotel industry, and some factories and service providers. Jobs are available in Johnson County or Kansas City, Missouri, but public transportation to get to those jobs is very limited. The community lacks some needed services, most notably public transportation, child care, and housing. Local service providers reported that many services are available, but they indicated that the mental health care available does not begin to meet families' needs, and transportation services are limited. They also cited a number of barriers to accessing available services, including eligibility criteria that exclude the working poor, lack of knowledge of available services and how to get them, fear of the "system" (because they have been punished by the system before), and unwillingness to provide the required information. Parents emphasized transportation as a barrier to getting services and becoming employed. A significant strength of the area is its sense of community and community pride among service providers. Many want to make Kansas City, Kansas, a better place. Community members are coming together around concerns about teenage pregnancy, violence, child care, and other community issues. Momentum is building around the question of "what can we do as a community for children, youth, and families"? The community's commitment to improvement has facilitated the development of strong collaboration among service providers and other community agencies. Service providers now have a history of collaborating and do so routinely. Local service providers and other organizations have formed different collaborative groups to address particular problems, such as teenage pregnancy, maternal and child health, and violence. Collaboration takes place at many levels, ranging from sharing referrals and networking to coordinating services for individual families to developing strategies and seeking funding together for new programs. For example, members of the Maternal and Child Health Coalition of Greater Kansas City recently joined in writing a successful proposal for a Healthy Start grant that will fund staff positions in several member organizations. Project EAGLE staff members reported that collaboration to help families get needed mental health services has been especially challenging, because mental health services are less readily available and families are more reluctant to seek or accept these services. |
CHILD DEVELOPMENT CORNERSTONE
Home Visits. Project EAGLE provides services to families primarily through home visits by family support advocates either weekly, if the focus child is not in a child care center, or biweekly, if the focus child receives developmentally appropriate child care. Family support advocates provide child development services during home visits, which last about 90 minutes. Family support advocates, who must have a college degree plus two years of experience in early childhood education or case management, have caseloads of 12 families. At the time of the site visit, family support advocates were finding it difficult to complete all planned home visits because some families were breaking appointments. In some cases, families were busy with efforts to meet the requirements of welfare reform and did not have time to meet weekly with their family support advocate. On average, families were receiving two home visits per month.
Child development and parenting education services during home visits are based on the Parents as Teachers (PAT) curriculum supplemented by lessons and activities developed by the early childhood education coordinator. Using the PAT curriculum, parent educators help parents understand what can be expected for their child at each stage of development and work with parents and children on appropriate learning activities. Family support advocates develop weekly lesson plans for home visits, which are reviewed by the early childhood specialist to ensure that they address goals or needs identified in the family's Individual Family Service Plan and follow through on issues that arose in previous home visits. The family support services coordinator and family support specialist also review the documentation of weekly home visits.
| Project EAGLE staff members believe that their program will improve child development outcomes by increasing parents' responsivity to their children and engaging them in their children's development. They also expect to improve child development by empowering parents to access formal and social supports, including comprehensive health and mental health services; to choose high-quality child care; to become more employable; and to create better home environments for their children. Project EAGLE staff members place a strong emphasis on helping parents understand how powerful they can be in influencing their children's development. |
Child Care. To promote the use of high-quality child care, Project EAGLE encourages families
who need child care to enroll their children in a child care center or family child care home
that provides developmentally appropriate care. Project EAGLE has established collaborative agreements
with several of the best child care centers in the area to provide developmentally appropriate
child care for Project EAGLE children. The centers are required to meet state ratio and group
size standards--a maximum of 9 infants in a group, with a ratio of 3 children per adult, and a
maximum of 10 toddlers in a group, with a ratio of 5 children per adult. Project EAGLE has also
established contracts with several family child care providers to provide developmentally appropriate
child care for Project EAGLE children.
Whenever possible, Project EAGLE helps families obtain state child care subsidies to pay for the care, but Project EAGLE will pay for child care when families are not eligible for subsidies, such as during gaps in employment. At the time of the site visit, approximately one-fourth of EHS-eligible children were in child care.
Project EAGLE provides training and technical assistance to the child care providers with whom it has contracts or collaborative agreements. The training and technical assistance is based on providers' self-assessments using the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale. At the time of the site visit, the program was also developing plans to provide funds to assist the child care centers with which it has collaborative agreements in working toward National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accreditation and to enable the center directors to participate in monthly support groups offered through the Child Care Improvement Network of Greater Kansas City.
Child Development Assessments. Project EAGLE staff members conduct formal assessments of progress towards early childhood education and parenting goals every six months using the Denver Developmental Screening Test II. They conduct informal assessments and observations in child care centers more frequently. The results of the assessments are considered by family support advocates when they are developing home visit lesson plans.
Health Services. When families enroll in Project EAGLE, the
health care coordinator assesses whether they have a medical home. If not, she works with family
support advocates to teach families that seeking health care from a consistent provider is important
and to help them identify a way to access health care. Most children (95 percent) are eligible
for Medicaid coverage. Children whose parents' employers do not offer health
insurance that they can afford and whose parents' earnings are too high to qualify for Medicaid
may be eligible for the Caring program sponsored by Blue Cross and Blue Shield. When necessary,
Project EAGLE arranges for health care through collaborative agreements with community health
care providers who have agreed to accept a capitated or reduced rate. If no other options are
available, Project EAGLE arranges for health care through agreements with University of Kansas
Medical Center health care providers who have agreed to accept referrals from Project EAGLE and
write off the costs of the care.
Family support advocates track children's receipt of immunizations, well-child examinations, and treatment for health problems with the help of the health care coordinator and the program's management information system. Family support advocates record information about immunizations and health care in their home visit documentation, which is reviewed for accuracy by the health care coordinator before information is entered into the management information system. The health care coordinator also reviews reports on receipt of immunizations and health care produced by the management information system. Based on these reviews, the health care coordinator follows up with family support advocates to make sure that they are working with families to obtain needed immunizations or health care for children.
Health education is integrated into the early childhood education lesson plans for home visits. Family support advocates teach parents about preventive care for their children, help them understand any conditions their child has and how these conditions affect child development, teach them how they can help alleviate these conditions, and teach them about infection control, hygiene, and safety. Before children are born, family support advocates urge mothers to get consistent prenatal care, track their receipt of this care, and use materials the program has developed to teach parents about pregnancy, prenatal care, nutrition, and breast-feeding.
Rotating groups of nursing students are placed at Project EAGLE for
their community nursing clinical experience. They accompany family support advocates on home visits
to conduct height and weight measurements, conduct nursing assessments, and identify health needs.
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Project EAGLE families who need child care rely on child care arrangements they find in the community and pay for them using state child care subsidies, whenever possible, or with help from Project EAGLE when necessary. At the time of the site visit, one-fourth of the families were using child care. Both the availability and quality of infant and toddler care have been identified as concerns in Kansas City, Kansas, and new collaborative groups have formed to address these issues. Project EAGLE staff members noted that there are only 17 infant and toddler slots in child care for every 25 that are needed. Concerns about child care quality center on the high rates of staff turnover (about 50 percent per year) and lack of strong educational backgrounds among many staff members (only slightly more than half of children are cared for in settings where the director or another staff member has an associate's or bachelor's degree in early childhood education). Several agencies have funding to provide resource and referral services, but they rely primarily on licensing lists or list of providers who have participated in training and do not assess the quality of care provided before making referrals. Project EAGLE staff members are involved in efforts to improve the quality of child care available in the community. Project EAGLE is working with Heart of America Family Services, Part C, and the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to implement a grant from the State of Kansas to recruit 20 new family child care providers and offer training and incentives to them and 20 existing family child care providers--along with eight hours of in-home technical assistance and monitoring. The grant pays for travel expenses, incentives, and substitute care while providers are in training. In late 1996, the Project EAGLE staff convened a group of early childhood professionals in Wyandotte county to discuss the growing need for child care for infants and toddlers. Following that meeting, committees met to develop goals, formulate action plans, and set timelines for addressing each goal. In May 1997, more than 75 federal, state, and community leaders gathered to review the availability and quality of child care for infants and toddlers in Wyandotte county and to engage in intensive dialogue about the issues, the role and responsibilities of community agencies and action steps for addressing the issues. |
Services for Children with Disabilities. Project EAGLE has established a collaborative agreement with Part C to assign a teacher, a speech/language pathologist, an occupational therapist, and a physical therapist as needed to assist children with special needs in infant/toddler classrooms of Project EAGLE children. In their collaborative agreements with Project EAGLE, child care centers agree to accept help from these staff members in classrooms with EHS children with special needs. At the time of the site visit, Project EAGLE, Part C, and one of the child care centers had initiated a plan for including infants and toddlers with disabilities in a child care setting with typically developing children. Project EAGLE family support advocates and Part C service coordinators serve as co-case managers for families with children with special needs, and when the child is in child care, the family support advocate works with the center personnel to enable the child to receive support services at the center. At the time of the site visit, three children had diagnosed disabilities and were receiving Part C services. Program staff members expect that as the children get older, more of them will have diagnosed disabilities and will become eligible for Part C services.
Transitions. Six months prior to families' graduation from Project EAGLE, staff members will work with families to develop an Individual Family Transition Plan. The plan will cover early childhood education, health, family systems, and self-sufficiency. It will include goals for transitions in these areas, as well as plans for meeting the goals.
FAMILY DEVELOPMENT CORNERSTONE
Needs Assessment and Service Planning. Family support advocates work with families to develop an Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) within 10 weeks after enrolling in the program. The IFSPs guide the development of weekly home visit lesson plans. IFSPs are reviewed and revised every three months.
Case Management. Family support advocates provide
family development services during the 90-minute home visits. They develop
caring relationships with families, motivate them to develop goals and
work toward them, teach problem-solving skills, and model appropriate
behavior. Family development services include case management, transportation
assistance, career counseling, literacy services during home visits, a
support group for teenage mothers and their mothers, emergency assistance,
and referrals to other community agencies for education and employment
services, physical and mental health care, and other social support services.
| Project EAGLE places primary emphasis on strengthening individual and family functioning and on supporting families in making competent decisions that are driven by the wants of the families. The Project EAGLE staff works to strengthen families to enable family members to exercise power and control over their own lives as they work in interdependent relationships with service providers and other community systems |
Education and Employment Services. Project EAGLE places a strong emphasis on helping families become economically self-sufficient, and the self-sufficiency coordinator offers in-house skills testing and career counseling, referrals to employment opportunities, followup with employers to learn how contacts went, and feedback to families about their contacts with employers. The program also offers job readiness training, with funding from a Street to Work grant. Staff members noted that family members often have to work in two or three jobs before finding one that will support their family. Project EAGLE has collaborative agreements with several education and employment training providers and several employment services providers.
Transportation. Project EAGLE provides transportation assistance--including bus passes, gasoline vouchers, and taxi rides--to families who need it to obtain services, attend school, or seek employment.
In addition, family support advocates sometimes take families to obtain needed services. The program refers families to the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitative Services for transportation assistance and has collaborative agreements with several community transportation providers to give transportation assistance directly when necessary. Transportation remains a serious challenge for many families, however.
Health Services. Although most children are covered by Medicaid, fewer adults qualify for Medicaid coverage under the new welfare policies in Kansas. When adults are not covered by Medicaid, family support advocates work with them toward the goal of obtaining catastrophic health care coverage and/or preparing for a job that will provide them with health insurance that they can afford. While families are in Project EAGLE, the program helps uninsured adult family members obtain needed physical and mental health care by making referrals to providers with whom they have collaborative agreements. These providers have agreed to accept Project EAGLE parents and write off the cost of the care.
Project EAGLE places a strong emphasis on helping families postpone additional births. Staff members make referrals to health care providers for family planning services and follow up to help families achieve their family planning goals.
Other Services. At the time of the site visit, Project EAGLE had recently initiated a monthly group activity for teenage mothers and their mothers to provide information and peer support. The group--which was formed in collaboration with Parents as Teachers, the school district, and a local youth services collaborative group--was designed to help the grandmothers continue to parent their children, who are teenage mothers, but let these teenage mothers parent their own children. Recent meetings have focused on safety, family identity, baby massage, and shopping at thrift stores. At the time of the site visit, about half of the teenage mothers in Project EAGLE had participated in at least one group meeting.
Project EAGLE recently received a Reading Is Fundamental grant. At the time of the site visit, staff members were planning to distribute four books per year to parents and to include activities during home visits for helping parents read to their children.
Family support advocates bring laptop computers along on home visits when they judge that it is safe and useful to do so. They use the laptop computers during home visits to expose families to technology and to enable them to consult a computerized information resources library while they are with families. At the time of the site visit, the information resources library included information on nutrition, prenatal care, preventive health care, and community resources. Having the information immediately available on the computer helps family support advocates build on families' motivation to work toward goals that are being discussed during the home visit. Portable printers are available so that family support advocates can leave copies of IFSPs with families when they are completed.
Project EAGLE helps families obtain emergency assistance from other community agencies and provides emergency financial assistance when necessary. When families request emergency assistance from the program, they are required to draw up a budget, and program staff members work with them to improve their financial planning and self-sufficiency skills.
Father Involvement. In addition to mothers (or primary caregivers), family support advocates have other family members, such as fathers or male partners, participate in home visits whenever mothers agree to include them. Family support advocates emphasize the importance of fathers in children's lives and encourage mothers to involve fathers. At the time of the site visit, 41 program families included fathers or father figures, and the majority of them were participating in home visits.
Parent Involvement in the Program. Each family support advocate works with parents in her caseload to elect a representative to the EHS Parent Policy Council. The EHS Parent Policy Council includes 20 Project EAGLE parents (one primary representative and one backup representative from each family support advocate's caseload) and two community representatives. About half of the parents attend each meeting. The parents identify areas that they would like to hear about during council meetings, and program staff members assist them in identifying speakers to make presentations during council meetings. Because the Parent Policy Council has hiring and firing authority, the University of Kansas has formed a board of directors to resolve any conflicts that develop between the Parent Policy Council and the program staff. In addition to Parent Policy Council meetings, Project EAGLE organizes two major social events for parents per year.
STAFF DEVELOPMENT CORNERSTONE
Project EAGLE's approach to staff development is guided by several principles: (1)
cross-training staff members in child and family development is critical; (2) training must be
ongoing; (3) training should begin with concrete explanation, include by active experimentation,
and conclude with critical reflection; (4) training must allow for practice and feedback; (5)
family support advocates need support from other staff members with expertise in child development
and family support; and (6) trainers need to be on staff to continue reinforcing lessons learned
in training.
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Welfare reform is generally viewed as a positive change by service providers, Project EAGLE, and many families. Nearly half of Project EAGLE families were receiving cash assistance when they enrolled in the program. In Kansas, families are now limited to receiving welfare for five years over their lifetime, and after two years of welfare receipt they are required to work. Mothers of children under age 1 are exempt from the work requirement. Child care subsidies are available to families with incomes at or below 185 percent of the poverty level, on a sliding fee scale based on income and family size. As of April 1997, the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, which administers the subsidies, reported that there was no waiting list for subsidies. Project EAGLE staff members noted that the new work requirements and welfare time limits are requiring families to adapt and think differently about education and early childbearing. They are requiring program administrators to adapt (for example, by being flexible in the hours they provide services) and think creatively about ways to help families affected by the new rules. Project EAGLE staff members are finding that welfare reform is causing families to give priority to finding jobs--it is a strong motivating factor and a useful case management tool for helping families work toward self-sufficiency. They are also finding, however, that families have less time for weekly or biweekly meetings with their family support advocate, monthly parent-child group activities, and Parent Policy Council. |
Training. The staff receives pre-service and ongoing training designed to address training needs. The associate director works with all staff members to identify their training needs and arranges for needed training. Working with other staff representatives, he develops a six-month training calendar so that all staff members are aware of planned meetings and training sessions.
Most of the staff training is conducted by Project EAGLE staff members, who are
required to submit written training plans that include learner involvement, practicing/ doing
experiences, and critical reflection. Staff members have developed a formal curriculum for the
initial six-week orientation training that staff receives.
For training in some areas, coordinators have guided family support advocates in defining the
topic, identifying resources, suggesting strategies, implementing the
strategies, and reflecting on how the strategies worked.
Each staff member may also receive up to $500 per year for continuing professional development activities, including attending professional conferences, taking college courses, and buying books. In addition, each staff member may use up to 10 days per year for professional activities.
Support and Supervision. Project EAGLE coordinators and specialists provide support and supervision for family support advocates. The program employs an early childhood education coordinator, a family support services coordinator, a self-sufficiency coordinator and a part-time health care coordinator, as well as three specialists who assist them. In addition to being available for consultation as needed, the coordinators meet with family support advocates for case conferences, which are conducted quarterly for each family. They also conduct family staffings (which focus on selected families) with each family support advocate twice year. The coordinators review home visit contact notes and follow up to address any issues identified. Each coordinator also accompanies each family support advocate on a home visit at least twice a year to observe and provide feedback. Family support advocates receive formal performance appraisals semiannually and meet with each coordinator to discuss their appraisal.
Project EAGLE staff members are University of Kansas employees and receive salaries that are similar to those paid by other areas programs, as well as generous fringe benefits. Staff members may receive merit raises annually.
Staff Turnover. At the time of the site visit, Project EAGLE had experienced relatively little staff turnover. Since it became an Early Head Start program, three family support advocates had left the program and had been replaced.
COMMUNITY BUILDING CORNERSTONE
Program Collaborations. As a CCDP program, Project EAGLE developed numerous formal interagency agreements with other community agencies and University of Kansas Medical Center departments to provide core services and emergency assistance to Project EAGLE families. The program has renewed many of these agreements and developed new ones for Early Head Start. At the time of the site visit, Project EAGLE had written collaborative agreements with 38 service providers and had informal agreements to collaborate with an additional 265 providers.
Based on their experience in the CCDP program, staff members have become more proactive in demanding high-quality services as part of the collaborative agreements. For example, the collaborative agreements the program has with three child care centers and five family child care providers require center staff members and family child care providers to assess the quality of care they provide using the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale, identify training needs, and work with the Project EAGLE staff to get the training they need. Project EAGLE conducts training for these and other child care providers quarterly. Project EAGLE also has enrolled the family child care providers caring for Project EAGLE children in NAEYC to underscore that they are respected professionals.
Interagency Collaboration. Project EAGLE staff members serve on boards of directors of other community service providers, and they participate and provide leadership in local planning and coordinating groups. Every staff member serves on at least one committee of a local coordinating or collaborative group and following each meeting, must prepare a report of the committee's activities. Program staff members also provide training and technical assistance to other community agencies.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND LOCAL RESEARCH
Early Program Support. During its first year as an Early Head Start program, Project EAGLE staff requested and received help from consultants through its Technical Assistance Support Center (TASC) and Resource Access Project (RAP). By the time of the site visit, the program had received three visits from its TASC consultant and two visits from its RAP consultant. The program also received key support from its federal project officer, its Zero to Three consultant and Region VII federal staff.
Continuous Program Improvement. A team of researchers at Juniper Gardens Children's Project of the University of Kansas, who have a long-established relationship with the program, is serving as Project EAGLE's local research partner for the national evaluation and for continuous program improvement.
The local research team, which includes experts in early intervention, families
with special needs, qualitative research, and data management and analysis, is engaging Project
EAGLE staff in a critical thinking process to identify intervention strategies to achieve desired
program outcomes, review issues that family advocates encounter in working with families, and
discuss ways to
resolve those issues. Together the team members have examined the process of providing services
and empowering families at a detailed level and discussed the difficulties of implementing the
program model as it was designed.
Based on the results of that process, the local research team has prepared a report
documenting the program's current theories of change, suggesting steps for developing the theories
of change more fully, and suggesting steps for considering possible modifications of basic program
strategies for different types of families and family issues. Program staff members have selected
training topics based on some of the critical
thinking sessions, without waiting for formal feedback from the local researchers.
Local Research. The local research team also plans to conduct integrated quantitative and qualitative studies to assess local program impacts and to investigate the factors that mediate the relationships between the program intervention and children's and families' outcomes. In particular, the local research is focusing on resilience and the growth over time in child and family outcomes. Local research team members are conducting case studies with 20 families to explore differences in risk and protective factors. They are also supplementing data collected for the national evaluation by collecting data on child and family outcomes at intermediate points, and they plan to examine program impacts and to investigate the role of risk and protective factors in mediating program impacts.
PROGRAM SUMMARY
Project EAGLE, building on its experience as a CCDP, provides child and family development services to diverse families in home visits and by linking families to good-quality child care arrangements. Program staff provide ongoing training and technical assistance to child care providers to improve the quality of care they provide. They are also mobilizing community leaders to address issues of availability and quality of child care for infants and toddlers. The program devotes considerable resources to providing training, supervision, and support to staff members. Program staff members are leaders in the community and have played a key role in developing collaborations among service providers.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Martha Staker
Project EAGLE of the University of Kansas Medical Center
Gateway Centre Tower II, Suite 1001
4th and State Avenue
Kansas City, KS 66101
LOCAL RESEARCHERS
Jane Atwater
University of Kansas
Juniper Gardens Children's Project
650 Minnesota, 2nd Floor
Kansas City, KS 66101
Judith J. Carta
University of Kansas
Juniper Gardens Children's Project
650 Minnesota, 2nd Floor
Kansas City, KS 66101
Jean Ann Summers
University of Kansas
Juniper Gardens Children's Project
650 Minnesota, 2nd Floor
Kansas City, KS 66101
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