ACF OPRE CORE - Publications and Reports - Reaching Out to Families: Head Start Recruitment and Enrollment Practices

2.0 Existing Findings Related to Served and Unserved Families

2.1 Overview

The purpose of this chapter is to explore existing data sources, both Head Start and national datasets in order to learn more about the characteristics of Head Start-eligible families. The datasets examined include the Head Start Program Information Report (PIR), the Survey on Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Panel Survey on Income Dynamics (PSID), the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), while Head Start FACES was used as a reference dataset.

2.1.1 Background

The purpose of this section is to review some recent papers that may provide information on unserved families. Perspectives from these other studies offer insights into the characteristics of low-income families who are not receiving needed services, including those families who may be eligible for, but not enrolled in, Head Start.

The underlying issue related to the interest in unserved families is that of addressing “unmet need,” which Queralt and Witte (1999) described as the gap or disparity between optimal levels of service (services that meet all needs) and actual levels of service provision (Queralt & Witte, 1999). The causes of this gap are varied, attributable to financial, language, or accessibility barriers that prevent families from using existing services, as well as to the failure of available services to meet the actual need for services. A less apparent cause, which actually does not fit this definition of unmet need, is the preference of some unserved families not to participate in government-sponsored programs. In order to learn more about unmet need, this project had an underlying goal to investigate the characteristics of the unserved families, to assess why they may not be enrolled in Head Start, and to identify methods that may be used to recruit and enroll unserved (unenrolled) families.

Community services providers have always been challenged to meet the changing needs of the families they serve, but recent shifts in the cultural and political landscape have created a moving target. Among the notable challenges facing families are the needs for adequate, accessible health services and for quality, affordable child care. In terms of the former, recent evidence shows that publicly-funded health services (Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program - CHIP) are making concerted outreach efforts to reduce the unmet need for health care for children. This has included an inter-agency effort within the Federal government and by national service organizations to inform families of the opportunities CHIP provides them. While both Medicaid and CHIP have seen enrollment increased because of these efforts, these programs still have not reached the levels of service originally anticipated across the country (Edmunds, Teitelbaum, & Gleason, 2000; Kenney, Haley, & Ullman, 1999).

With regards to child care services, several studies conducted on the national and local levels have focused on how families were managing their need for care while either remaining on waiting lists for available slots or while waiting for child care subsidies to pay for care. These studies found that families on waiting lists reflected an unmet need, and often made compromises by using other family members and neighbors as care providers (Casper, 1996; Coonerty & Levy, 1998), sometimes accepting a lower quality of child care than they would have liked (Coonerty & Levy, 1998). In turn, many of the families that were having to pay for care while waiting for subsidies were putting themselves in a risky financial position by going into serious debt (Armson, 1999; Coonerty & Levy, 1998).

Some recent studies have taken a more focused look at Head Start-eligible families. Examining a sample of families taken from the National Child Care Survey of 1990, Hofferth (1994) investigated the characteristics of families who enrolled in Head Start and those who did not. Hofferth noted that a number of factors were associated with a child’s Head Start enrollment, including the education of the mother, race of the child, geographic region, enrollment of the household head in a training program, and standard of living, as well as the supply of child care available in the family’s county of residence. She also noted that the children most likely to be enrolled in Head Start were those living with unemployed parents. Of the 3- to 5-year-old children not enrolled in Head Start, only about one quarter were enrolled in a center-based child care program, with parent or relative care being the most likely options for their children. Among the eligible families, children from the families with the lowest incomes were about as likely to be enrolled in Head Start as children from families with the highest incomes. Parents with children in Head Start also were more likely to have used multiple services than parents who did not enroll their children in Head Start. The implication of this is that the unmet need for many of these non-enrolled families may extend beyond the help Head Start can provide by itself.

Economic disadvantages of the types encountered by Head Start-eligible families have been associated with problems in children’s cognitive and emotional development, as well as with problem behaviors (Huston, McLoyd, & Garcia, 1997; McLoyd, 1998; Vandivere, Moore, & Brown, 2000). Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), Foster (in press) recently examined data collected in the early 1990's, focusing on Head Start-eligible families and the presence of four key disadvantages for those families: poverty, welfare receipt, female head of household, and parental joblessness. He reported that the level of disadvantage was high among enrolled families, particularly among African-American families. In a comparison of enrolled and eligible, non-enrolled families, Foster found that in spite of similarities in neighborhood characteristics, the children from non-enrolled families encountered an even greater number of disadvantages. He noted that this difference has been in gradual decline over time, suggesting that Head Start may be reaching more of the disadvantaged families it is targeting.

In a recent, unpublished paper, Nord (1999) compared data describing Head Start children and families collected for the Head Start FACES study, with data gathered during the March 1997 Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS describes the characteristics of and their families. When comparing Head Start children with poor children from the general population, the Head Start children were more likely to live in two-parent families findings noted earlier. Head Start children were more likely than poor 3- to 5- year olds to have had a mother with at least some college experience, to have a mother who worked full families that received welfare and food stamps. The author concluded, with appropriate caution, that Head Start children may be somewhat better off than other poor children, and being reached by Head Start, particularly citing the children who lived in single-parent families with parents who had a low education.

Finally, in a study of Head Start recruitment and enrollment efforts, Love and Grover (1987) examined how Head Start programs from a range of communities attempted to meet the challenge of providing services to the most needy children within the targeted low-income population in their service area. In addressing the issues, the following key findings were reported:

While there was wide variation among programs, there appeared to be considerable evidence that many programs used intensive outreach and recruitment efforts to recruit the most needy families, and that large proportions of the eligible population were being served.
While many programs structured their services to meet what Head Start perceived as the needs of the families in their communities, some families did not enroll or dropped out because they did not see the program meeting their specific needs.
When defining “need,” programs’ criteria generally focused on family income; however, programs also considered other factors such as family problems, disabilities and health problems.
While half of all drop-outs resulted from family mobility, programs believed that more families could be retained if additional services or longer program days could be provided.
If the proportion of enrollees in the “most needy” category increased, programs would likely need additional staff, additional resources to assist multiple-problem families, reconstruction of handicapped accessible facilities, and additional recruitment costs.

Love and Grover (1987) also concluded that “need” is not a straight-forward concept. The diversity of needs staff reported for low-income populations suggested that the criteria for establishing need went well beyond family income. Head Start programs often addressed this by preparing to meet the variety of economic, social, and emotional needs among the families that were enrolled, but this had implications for recruitment by putting the focus on families Head Start could help.

2.2 Head Start PIR

The Head Start Program Information Report (PIR) contains self-report data from every Head Start program. Collected annually, these reports are the only single source of information from all Head Start programs. Data are reported at the program-level, with very limited information on families. For this study, information on proportions of children 1) leaving the program before attending classes, 2) leaving the program at any point after classes began, and 3) remaining in the program for less than 45 days after enrollment was examined. Information is also presented on the percentage of drop-outs replaced during the year and those replaced within 30 days.

The analysis of the PIR was completed using data from the 1993-94, 1995-96, and 1997-98 program years. A total of 1,565 programs, serving children aged 3 years and older, were in operation and reported data for all three of these years. During this period, the average number of children served (aged 3 years and older only) increased 13% per program. The largest percentage increases were for programs in the Western region (19.7%), while the smallest growth was observed in the Midwest (8.3%). The numbers presented in the following exhibits represent the unweighted mean percentages (and standard deviations) as reported across programs.

Exhibit 2-1 contains information regarding the mean percentages across programs of children who left their program before classes or home visits began. This information was not included in the 1997-98 PIR. Each year, about 4% of children left their program after receiving some services (such as health screenings, family needs assessments, etc.), but before the child actually attended classes or received a home visit. The percentages were slightly higher in urban programs (about 5%) than in rural programs (about 3%) and were generally higher in the Northeast (about 5%) and Midwest (just over 6%) than in the South (less than 3%) and West (just over 3%).

Exhibit 2-1

Mean percentages (and standard deviations) across programs of children who received some services from Head Start but left the program *before* classes began or *before* receiving a home visit
	Number of Programs*	1994	1996	1998
Overall	1565	4.0 (7.5)	4.1 (7.6)	- - -
Rural	688	2.6 (6.0)	3.2 (6.2)	- - -
Urban	877	5.0 (8.7)	4.8 (8.7)	- - -
Northeast	412	4.8 (8.7)	5.5 (9.2)	- - -
South	559	2.0 (4.5)	2.6 (6.6)	- - -
Midwest	319	6.6 (11.0)	6.0 (7.2)	- - -
West	275	3.7 (7.5)	2.8 (7.5)	- - -