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Part 2: Home-Based Programs
Early Head Start Program Profile
KCMC Early Head Start
Kansas City, Missouri
October 29-31, 1997
KCMC Child Development Corporation, a community-based organization that provides child care and Head Start services to low-income families, operates an Early Head Start program for 75 families in the poorest neighborhoods of Kansas City, Missouri. The Early Head Start program serves primarily African American, single, teenage parents, two-fifths of whom were receiving welfare cash assistance when they enrolled. In collaboration with the Kansas City, Missouri, School District's Parents as Teachers program, it provides child and family development services primarily in regular home visits and parent group meetings. At the time of the site visit, KCMC had recently opened a new child development center and expected many Early Head Start children to enroll in it. Child development services focus on establishing and supporting parent-child relationships and working with parents to support their children's development.
OVERVIEW
The KCMC (Karing for Children is our Main Concern) Child Development Corporation operates an Early Head Start (EHS) program in Kansas City, Missouri. KCMC has provided child development services since 1970 and became a Head Start grantee in 1979. In 1990, it also began operating the Full Start program, which provides full-day year-round child care for preschool children and extends care to families who are not eligible for Head Start. KCMC recently opened the Thomas-Roque Family and Child Development Center, which houses one of KCMC's Head Start centers, as well as the EHS program offices. The center also includes several infant and toddler classrooms with spaces available for EHS children.
Community Context. The KCMC EHS program serves families living in some of the poorest neighborhoods in Kansas City, Missouri. These neighborhoods have problems that most urban areas have, including high levels of crime and substance abuse, as well as a lack of needed services, most notably public transportation, child care, and housing. The greater Kansas City area benefits from strong collaboration among service providers and other community agencies. Service providers now have a history of collaborating and do so routinely. In 1992, the Local Investment Commission (LINC) was formed to foster collaboration and connect public, private, and community resources to create an integrated service delivery system in Kansas City, Missouri.
Program Model. The KCMC EHS program is a home-based program. It has a formal agreement with the Kansas City, Missouri, School District's Parents as Teachers program to work together to provide child development services to EHS families. Each EHS family receives regular home visits from a Parents as Teachers parent educator and an EHS family development specialist who works with the parent to develop goals in key life domains, shares information on resources, helps parents address barriers to achieving their goals, and works with the parent and child on child development activities
Families. Most of the families served by the KCMC EHS program are African American; a small proportion are white or belong to other racial or ethnic groups. The majority of the parents are single, teenage parents. About one-third of the parents are 20 or older, and only about 6 percent are married. One-third of the mothers were pregnant when they enrolled in the program. Approximately 40 percent were receiving welfare cash assistance when they enrolled.
Staffing. The KCMC EHS director and the family development coordinator provide support and supervision for five family development specialists. An administrative assistant/data manager provides clerical support and maintains the program's management information system. A supervisor from the Parents as Teachers program occupies an office at the KCMC EHS program and oversees the Parents as Teachers parent educators who work collaboratively with the family development specialists. The KCMC EHS staff members also receive support from other KCMC Head Start coordinators.
RECRUITMENT AND ENROLLMENT
Program Eligibility. The KCMC EHS program is recruiting first-time mothers who are pregnant or have an infant under 12 months of age, have incomes below the federal poverty guidelines, and reside in its target area (the neighborhoods served by Swope Parkway Health Center). KCMC originally planned to enroll only pregnant women, but it extended eligibility to parents of infants under 12 months of age in order to meet the schedule for full enrollment. Since submitting its grant proposal, KCMC has added several other zip code areas with high poverty rates to its target area, and at the time of the site visit, it was serving families living in 15 zip code areas.
Recruiting Strategies. The KCMC EHS program has used a wide range of strategies to recruit participants, including airing public service announcements on the radio, establishing relationships with and making presentations at community agencies that are potential referral sources, setting up tables at mall events, distributing flyers describing the program, publishing newspaper announcements, and encouraging word-of-mouth referrals. The public service announcements were not as effective as the program had hoped, but referrals from other community agencies have been important for identifying and enrolling eligible families. The program has received many referrals from Swope Parkway Health Center and Truman Hospital.
Enrollment. KCMC EHS is funded to serve 75 families, all of whom will participate in the research. The program reached full enrollment in early 1997; however, at the time of the site visit, approximately 54 families were actively participating in the program. Staff members were working on reestablishing contact with the remaining families following a period of staff turnover and loss of regular contact with families. Several families who have moved or are no longer interested in participating in the program have been placed on a "waiting list" of inactive families and will be replaced.
Most of the families enrolled in the program are African American, and approximately two-thirds of the primary parents are under 20 years old. Approximately one-third of the parents are attending school or training, one-third are employed, and one-third are participating in other work-related activities required by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Approximately half have received their high school diploma or a General Educational Development (GED) certificate. Many of the families have good family support and came to the program with an openness to receiving EHS services. Among the families' greatest needs are better housing, transportation, and information about services for which they are eligible.
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The KCMC EHS program serves families living in an area comprising 15 zip codes in Kansas City, Missouri. High concentrations of low-income families live in these neighborhoods, which have problems that most urban areas have, including high levels of crime and substance abuse, as well as a lack of needed services, most notably public transportation, child care, and housing. The family development coordinator reported that jobs are available, but most pay under $8.00 per hour. Community service providers noted that the neighborhoods served by the KCMC EHS program lack needed businesses, such as gas stations, but include businesses that are not conducive to positive growth, such as liquor stores. Local service providers reported that many services are available, but public transportation and housing assistance are not adequate to meet families' needs. In addition, more high-quality child care is needed. They also cited a number of barriers to accessing available services, including mistrust of the "system" (because people feel that they have been treated poorly by the system before) and a mismatch between the hours that services are available and the hours that families are available. The greater Kansas City area benefits from strong collaboration among service providers and other community agencies. 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 coordinate 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. In Kansas City, Missouri, LINC, which was established in 1992, became the vehicle for reforming the social services delivery system. LINC has worked to foster collaboration and connect public, private, and community resources to create an integrated service delivery system. It administers the welfare-to-work program (FUTURES), has developed school-linked services at 16 school sites, coordinates the Educare program described above, and offers professional development training. |
CHILD DEVELOPMENT CORNERSTONE
Home Visits. The KCMC EHS program has a formal agreement with the Kansas City, Missouri, School District's Parents as Teachers (PAT) program to work together to provide child development services to KCMC EHS families. Each family enrolled in the program is assigned to a PAT parent educator employed by the Kansas City, Missouri, School District and a family development specialist employed by the EHS program. PAT parent educators and EHS family development specialists are paired in a buddy system so that they share caseloads.5
Parent educators plan a home visit with each EHS family in their caseload for an hour once a month (early in the month) and follow the PAT curriculum. 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. The EHS family development specialist who is responsible for each family is informed about what the parent educator did in his or her visit and plans at least two home visits during the rest of the month to enhance what the parent educator did, discuss a specific area of child development, and share materials related to that topic. These home visits, which also include family development activities, typically last between one and two hours (visits are longer when families first enroll in the program and are still developing a relationship with their family development specialist). The PAT parent educator and the family development specialist occasionally make home visits together. Families who are active in the program receive an average of three home visits per month.
| The KCMC EHS program sees the parent as the primary caregiver and focuses its child development services on establishing and supporting the bond between the parent and the child. The program aims to increase parents' knowledge of child development and their confidence in parenting so that they will engage in activities that promote their children's development and work proactively to improve their children's environments. The program also aims to help parents understand the importance of high-quality child care, help them make informed choices, and empower them to have relationships with their children's caregivers. |
The PAT parent educators have caseloads of 19 families, and the EHS family development specialists have caseloads of 15 families. Family development specialists are required to have a college degree in a family/human services, education, or child development field plus three years of experience working with low-income families.
Group Child Development Activities. The EHS family development coordinator and the PAT liaison plan a group meeting for parents and children at the Thomas-Roque Family and Child Development Center for two hours after school on one Thursday each month. The children are cared for in the child care area while the parents meet, except during child development activities. The parent meetings have addressed such topics as spanking and male-female relationships. The program provides dinner and gifts (child development information and donated items, such as books) for the parents and children who attend the meetings. Typically, 20 to 30 parents attend each meeting.
PAT parent educators also encourage parents to participate in other PAT activities in the community, including Jumping--Jogging--Jingling sessions to help infants' motor, social, and language skills, Learning Labs, and the First Books program that helps parents collect books for their children. Parents as Teachers maintains a parent and child activity center with a toy lending library at the Thomas-Roque Child and Family Development Center.
Child Care. When children must be in child care so that their parents can participate in school, training, or work, the KCMC EHS family development specialists teach parents how to select a high-quality child care arrangement. The program has several checklists that they can offer to parents to help them make their selection. The family development specialists encourage parents to use center-based care (especially the Thomas-Roque Family and Child Development Center, now that it has opened) but support parents' choices of other types of arrangements. Parents often prefer care by relatives when their baby is very young, and staff members encourage these relative caregivers to attend parent activities with the parents and to read the program's monthly newsletter. If parents are interested in center-based care, staff members make referrals to several local child care centers that have been rated as providing high quality child care. Staff members also use Heart of America Child Care Resource and Referral services to identify potential child care providers.
At the time of the site visit, most children were in some type of nonmaternal child care. Approximately 12 children were enrolled in the Thomas-Roque Child and Family Development Center. Staff members estimated that approximately 20 children were being cared for by relative caregivers, and the remaining children were enrolled in State-licensed child care centers or family child care homes. The program does not monitor the quality of these child care arrangements. In early 1998, however, staff members were conducting a survey of program families to learn systematically about their child care arrangements, and they planned to work on improving the quality of families' child care arrangements if necessary.
The Thomas-Roque center, which opened in September 1997, planned to give first priority to EHS children for 24 infant slots and 24 toddler slots. These slots will be funded by a combination of EHS funds and state child care subsidies, as well as small co-payments from parents. At the time of the site visit, 29 families had expressed interest in enrolling their children in the Thomas-Roque center. The state has guaranteed subsidies for EHS parents participating in the FUTURES program (Missouri's welfare-to-work program).
KCMC plans to help promote higher-quality family child care by participating as a partner in Missouri's Educare program, which offers training, educational resources, and home visits to family child care providers in the EHS target area. KCMC also hosts an annual child care conference.
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All of the EHS families need child care in order to participate in school, work, or other work-related activities. At the time of the site visit, most children were in child care arrangements made by their parents without the program's help. About one-fifth of the children had recently enrolled in KCMC's newly opened Thomas-Roque Child Development Center. Both the availability and the quality of infant and toddler child care
have been identified as concerns in Kansas City, Missouri. 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 the children
are cared for in settings where the director or another staff member has an associate's
or bachelor's degree in early childhood). Child care wages are low, and local casinos, which
pay more, draw child care staff persons out of the field. 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. The Governor's Commission on Early Care and Education
is working to find ways to address child care issues in Missouri. |
Child Development Assessments. The PAT parent educators conduct developmental and health screenings with the children at least once a year. They use the Denver Developmental Screening Test II and the Preschool Learning Scale. The EHS family development specialists also conduct developmental screening tests with children if they enroll in the Thomas-Roque Child and Family Development Center.
Health Services. The EHS family development specialists will educate parents about their children's health care needs and ensure that they receive the preventive and treatment services they need. The family development specialists and the Head Start health coordinator at the Thomas-Roque center review the immunization status of EHS children and monitor well-baby examinations. When parents do not get needed immunizations or examinations for their children, the program brings a health care provider to the center to provide the needed immunizations or examinations, or staff members take the children to a health care provider for the needed immunizations or examinations.
Initially, the program formed a partnership with Swope Parkway Health Center, located next to the Thomas-Roque center, to provide a medical home for children who did not have one somewhere else. However, the implementation of Medicaid managed care in Kansas City, Missouri, interfered with these plans. Swope Parkway Health Center now participates as one of four Medicaid managed care organizations in the community. Because families enrolled in EHS are enrolled in all four Medicaid managed care plans, however, Swope Parkway Health Center cannot provide health services to all families who need them, as had been planned originally. At the time of the site visit, the program was gathering information on families' choices of Medicaid providers and assessing whether they had medical homes. KCMC EHS staff members were also talking with staff members from Swope Parkway Health Center about new ways of working together to help meet the needs of EHS parents.
Services for Children with Disabilities. The KCMC EHS program coordinates with First Steps, the Part C program operated by LINC to provide services to children with disabilities. State regulations specify that the First Steps program has primary responsibility for families' Individual Family Service Plans (IFSPs). However, EHS and PAT staff members have input into the contents of the IFSPs, and they reported that the IFSPs are useful for guiding EHS family development specialists in working with families. The EHS family development coordinator serves on the Local Interagency Coordinating Council. In addition to working with First Steps, EHS staff members refer parents of children with disabilities to the Missouri Parent Advocacy Center Training (IMPACT), a support group for parents of children with special needs. At the time of the site visit, eight children enrolled in the program had diagnosed disabilities.
Transitions. At the time of the site visit, the program was planning to develop case management procedures for developing family transition plans. KCMC operates a Head Start program, so the EHS staff expects the transition to be easy for some children and families. The KCMC Head Start transition coordinator facilitates information sharing, involves parents, and makes sure that the Head Start development specialist receives children's assessments.
FAMILY DEVELOPMENT CORNERSTONE
Needs Assessment and Service Planning. EHS family development specialists work with each family to assess their strengths, goals, and needs and develop a Personal Early Head Start Plan within 90 days after enrollment. Family development specialists plan to conduct strengths assessments and review and update individual plans continuously as families achieve goals and make transitions.
Case Management. During their regular home visits, family development specialists provide case management using the Strengths-Based Model of Case Management. They make referrals to community programs for a wide range of needed family support services, including housing, transportation, physical and mental health care, education, and employment-related services. The program focuses on serving the parent and the focus child, but family development specialists include other family members and/or the child's father if the parent wants them to.
| The KCMC EHS program's approach to providing family development services grows out of two basic beliefs. First, in order to improve child development, the program must improve parenting. Second, it is important not only to provide services to families but also to teach parents how to obtain services they need so that they do not become dependent on the program and can advocate and obtain services on behalf of their children. |
The program employs a full-time family development coordinator to help the family development specialists identify and arrange support services for families. Family development specialists refer families to a wide range of community programs and organizations for needed services. To assist the family development specialists, the program has purchased software from the Mid-America Assistance Coalition listing specific information about available community resources. The software is updated quarterly.
If a parent is participating in FUTURES, the welfare-to-work program operated by LINC, the EHS family development specialist communicates with his or her FUTURES case manager to support the parent's participation in education or employment-related activities. When parents are sanctioned for not meeting participation requirements, FUTURES case managers notify EHS staff members, who follow up with the parents. LINC is one of the EHS program's key partners.
Father Involvement. Fathers of children in EHS are encouraged to participate in home visits and to attend parent meetings. Approximately 10 different fathers have attended parent meetings on at least one occasion. Three fathers attend regularly.
Program staff members may refer fathers in EHS families to several programs designed to encourage male involvement in children's lives. LINC operates the FUTURES Connection, a program for noncustodial parents of children who receive welfare benefits. This program provides employment assistance, education, and other self-sufficiency-oriented services and pays child support for fathers participating in the program until they become employed. Another program operated by LINC, the Caring Communities program, has placed male staff members in several local elementary schools throughout the community to work with fathers of elementary school children and other fathers in the community. EHS refers fathers and father figures to support groups for fathers that these male staff members lead.
Parent Involvement in the Program. At the time of the site visit, the program planned to establish an EHS Steering Committee comprising EHS parents and community representatives. Previously, the program had planned to establish an EHS Parent Committee. This committee would elect two representatives to serve on KCMC's Grantee Parent Committee, which in turn elects representatives to the Head Start Policy Council. At the time of the site visit, no EHS parents were serving on the Head Start Policy Council, because it meets during the day, and many EHS parents attend school during the day and work at night.
Parents also have opportunities to volunteer at the Thomas-Roque center, and the KCMC parent involvement coordinator plans to recruit EHS parent volunteers for national Head Start activities. Approximately one-third of EHS parents have volunteered to set up or clean up after parent group meetings.
The KCMC EHS program also provides parents with child development information in a monthly newsletter that includes articles on child development topics. Staff members send the newsletter to enrolled parents, nonresident fathers of children in the program, and other caregivers.
STAFF DEVELOPMENT CORNERSTONE
Staff development activities include regular team meetings and training, participation in community groups, and annual performance assessments. Fridays are reserved for staff meetings, training sessions, and completing paperwork.
Training. Staff training builds on staff strengths identified in the hiring process and through forms filled out by family development specialists when they were hired asking them to identify their areas of expertise and their training needs. Training plans also build on information obtained from staff members using the Family Development Program Self-Assessment Checklist. Staff members are cross-trained in the areas of family support and child development. Training sessions have included presentations on a wide range of topics by other community service providers, as well as an intensive eight-week class on serving infants and toddlers in high-risk families, for which staff received college credit. The course, which was conducted by University of Missouri at Columbia staff members, focused on child development, case management, and family functioning/family systems.
Staff members are encouraged to attend conferences and to participate in national training opportunities. In addition, every staff member is assigned to attend meetings of a local professional association or interagency coordinating group. Staff members are responsible for informing their colleagues about what they have learned at the meetings.
Supervision and Support. The family development coordinator reviews the case files and services delivered to each family quarterly and discusses the review with the family's family development specialist. The review examines receipt of services and participation in activities in key areas (child development and parenting, health, nutrition, parent involvement, family development, safety, and education). The family development coordinator makes recommendations for working with the family and recommendations for staff development that will support the family development specialist in serving the family.
The KCMC EHS director and the family development coordinator provide support and supervision for family development specialists. In addition to being available for consultation as needed and meeting with family development specialists individually for quarterly case conferences on each family, the family development coordinator meets with the family development specialists together at least once a month to review a difficult case and do group problem solving to plan next steps with the family. In addition, the family development coordinator accompanies each family development specialist on a home visit at least twice a month to observe and provide feedback.
The program director conducts a formal performance appraisal of each staff member six months after he or she joins the program and annually thereafter. The program director reported that staff are paid relatively well.
Staff Turnover. During the year prior to the site visit, the KCMC EHS program had experienced some staff turnover. A new program director joined the program in January 1997, and three family development specialists left the program in early to mid 1997 and were replaced in September 1997. The staff turnover occurred as the program's focus shifted to child development--some staff members whose backgrounds were in social work decided that they were not interested in providing child development services and left the program. The new family development specialists have backgrounds in child development.
COMMUNITY BUILDING CORNERSTONE
Program Collaborations. KCMC's approach to community building is to expand existing partnerships to focus on services to families with children under age 3 and to develop new partnerships with agencies that serve this population. The KCMC EHS program has several major partners with whom they collaborate in serving families, including the Kansas City, Missouri, School District's Parents as Teachers program, which provides parent educators to work with families; LINC, which operates the FUTURES program; and Swope Parkway Health Center, which is one of four Medicaid managed care providers in the community.
The FUTURES is the state's welfare-to-work program, which provides case management, education and training services, employment assistance, transportation assistance, and subsidized child care. The FUTURES program gives priority to serving EHS families and guarantees child care subsidies for EHS families participating in the FUTURES program.
Although Swope Parkway Health Center agreed to work with the KCMC EHS program to ensure that families receive needed health services, that has not been possible in practice, because some EHS families selected other Medicaid managed care providers. The EHS program and Swope Parkway Health Center staffs do, however, exchange referrals. At the time of the site visit, EHS and Swope Parkway Health Center staff members were exploring new ways of working together.
The EHS program also has informal agreements with approximately 50 other agencies to conduct brief cross-trainings for staff and collaborate in other ways.
Interagency Collaboration. Staff members participate in many interagency collaborative groups, including the Case Managers Association, which holds meetings every other month to share information, discuss case scenarios in break-out groups, and help identify and prevent the duplication in services and application processes that overwhelms parents; the Coalition for Positive Family Relationships, a large group of local service providers and organizations who meet to share information and identify opportunities for collaboration; the Part C Local Interagency Coordinating Council monthly staffings; and cross-training sessions offered by LINC.
The KCMC EHS program has been working with other community groups to bring a parenting perspective to efforts to serve fathers and father figures in disadvantaged families. The program's male family development specialist attends meetings of the Full Employment Council, which is spearheading an initiative to place men in jobs, and he shares ways to appeal to men from a parenting perspective. He also attends meetings at the National Center for Fathering, which is located in Kansas City, and participates in information-sharing events sponsored by the center. The National Center for Fathering was founded in 1990 to conduct research on fathering and to develop practical resources to prepare and support fathers in meeting their responsibilities.
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In Missouri, 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. Child care subsidies are available to all families with incomes at or below 133 percent of the poverty level, on a sliding fee scale based on income, family size, and hours of care. TANF recipients who have children under 12 months old are exempt from the work requirement. Teenage parents receiving cash assistance who are under 18 and have not earned their high school diploma or a General Educational Development (GED) credential are required to attend school or an educational program. Approximately 40 percent of EHS families were receiving cash assistance when they enrolled in the program. The new welfare policies have required the KCMC EHS program to make some adjustments. The new emphasis on employment and the provisions requiring teenage welfare recipients to attend school have made it difficult for the program to complete the schedule of home visits that they originally planned. Staff members have had to negotiate with parents to keep them involved in the program and agree to visit them at home less frequently. To make it easier for families to participate in EHS, the program has submitted a proposal to make EHS participation count toward satisfying the work requirement. Families have been overwhelmed by the possibility of being sanctioned under the new rules, and family development specialists often work closely with FUTURES case managers to help families avoid being sanctioned. Families sometimes face requirements to attend a GED program or other TANF activity within a very short time but do not have child care arranged. Under those circumstances, they often take the first arrangement they can find, without consulting the program staff. Family development specialists then have to work to encourage parents to consider using higher-quality child care arrangements. Some program staff members noted that while the new TANF requirements have frightened parents, they are useful in motivating young parents to take responsibility for themselves, work toward self-sufficiency, and avoid slipping into the trench of welfare dependency. |
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT AND LOCAL RESEARCH
Early Program Support. Program staff members have attended training sessions provided by their Resource Access Project (RAP) and by Zero to Three National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families. They were receiving technical assistance on home visiting from their Technical Assistance Support Center (TASC) at the time of the site visit. The program has also received key support from its federal project officer and Zero to Three consultant.
Continuous Program Improvement. The KCMC EHS program is working closely with its local research team, which includes researchers from the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Missouri at Columbia (UMC) on continuous program improvement activities. The local research team, which includes three researchers with expertise in child care, family development, parenting education, and multicultural and diversity issues, have been visiting the EHS program monthly to meet with its staff members, and the two groups communicate with one another frequently by telephone. EHS and UMC staff members view the program and the local research as one project--the local researchers help the program by providing training and feedback on home visits, and the program helps the local researchers by implementing random assignment and participating in focus groups.
To help with continuous program improvement, the UMC staff has conducted an intensive 8-week training course (described above), interviewed various constituencies about their perceptions of their roles and the roles of others, and conducted the Working Alliance Inventory with families and presented results to the program.
Local Research. The local research team is conducting intensive case studies with a random sample of 12 program families to explore factors that mediate and/or moderate the impact of EHS on child and family functioning. Using quantitative data from program records and surveys and qualitative data from interviews, focus groups, and family development specialists' case notes, they will construct narrative accounts of the 12 families' experiences and identify themes and patterns that appear to be related to program effectiveness.
PROGRAM SUMMARY
The KCMC EHS program, which serves many single, teenage parents and their children, provides child and family development services to families primarily in home visits. At the time of the site visit, the program was continuing to shift its focus from family development to child development. It was planning to discontinue its formal collaboration with Parents as Teachers and to add a staff member to provide additional support for child development services. In addition, with the opening of the Thomas-Roque Child Development Center at KCMC, a new option for good-quality child care became available for up to 48 program families.
PROGRAM DIRECTOR
Mary K. Ross-Harper
KCMC Child Development Corporation
3800 East 51st Street, Room 106
Kansas City, MO 64130
LOCAL RESEARCHERS
Mark Fine
University of Missouri at Columbia
31 Stanley Hall
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Columbia, MO 65211
Jean Ispa
University of Missouri at Columbia
31 Stanley Hall
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Columbia, MO 65211
Kathy Thornburg
University of Missouri at Columbia
32 Stanley Hall
Department of Human Development and Family Studies
Columbia, MO 65211
5 At the time of the site visit, the program's focus was shifting to place more emphasis on child development. Program officials were reconsidering the collaboration with the PAT program, because staff members believed the PAT services are not intensive enough to meet EHS families' needs. The program was considering relying on family development specialists to provide child development services, with support from a child development coordinator who would be hired to provide child development training and supervision. [back]
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