HEAD START PERFORMANCE STANDARDS
There are three areas for which the Head Start Standards require goals and outcomes for the children and families served:
Early Childhood Development and Health Services
Head start's commitment to wellness embraces a comprehensive vision of health for children, families, and staff. One objective of this area is to ensure that, through collaboration among families, staff, and health professionals, all child health and developmental concerns are identified, and children and families are linked to an ongoing source for continuous, accessible care to meet their basic health needs.
Another objective is to provide all children with a safe, nurturing, engaging, enjoyable, and secure learning environment, in order to help them gain the awareness, skills and confidence necessary to succeed in their present environment, and to deal with later responsibilities in school and in life. Each child is treated as an individual in an inclusive community that values, respects, and responds to diversity. The varied experiences provided by the program support the continuum of children's growth and development, which includes the physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development of each child.
Head Start's commitment to wellness embraces a comprehensive vision of health for children, families, and staff. The objective is to support healthy physical development by encouraging practices that prevent illness or injury, and by promoting positive, culturally relevant health behaviors that enhance life-long well-being.
Head Start also promotes child wellness by providing nutrition services that supplement and complement those of the home and community. Heat Start's child nutrition services assist families in meeting each child's nutrition needs and in establishing good eating habits that nurture healthy development and promote life-long well-being.
Head Start embraces a vision of mental wellness. The objective is to build collaborative relationships among children, families, staff, mental health professionals, and the larger community, in order to enhance awareness and understanding of mental wellness and the contribution that mental health information and services can make to the wellness of all children and families.
Family and Community Partnerships
Head Start offers parents opportunities and support for growth, so that they can identify their own strengths, needs and interests, and find their own solutions. The objective is to support parents as they identify and meet their own goals, nurture the development of their children in the context of their family and culture, and advocate for communities that are supportive of children and families of all cultures. The building of trusting, collaborative relationships between parents and staff allows them to share with and to learn from one another.
Head Start serves families within the context of the community, and recognizes that many other agencies and groups work with the same families. The objective is to ensure that grantee and delegate agencies collaborate with partners in their communities, in order to provide the highest level of services to children and families, to foster the development of a continuum of family centered services, and to advocate for a community that shares responsibility of the healthy development of children and families of all cultures.
Program Design and Management
The objective of Program Design and Management is to ensure that each grantee and delegate agency has an established policy group and a well-functioning governing body that share responsibility for overseeing the delivery of high quality services to children and families in accordance with Head Start legislation, regulations, and policies. Through the Policy Council and Policy Committee - groups with policy-making authority at the grantee and delegate agency levels, respectively - and through the local Parent Committees, parents and other community representatives are empowered to actively participate in the shared decision-making process.
As well as to establish dynamic and cohesive management systems that support continuous improvement and foster commitment to providing the highest level of services to children and families in accordance with legislations, regulations, and policies.
Management systems and procedures are part of each
program's ongoing and organized approach to managing Head Start services.
They are all connected and inter-related with each impacted by the others
and all influencing and influenced by program services. With all of these
systems, the emphasis is as much on the process involved in their implementation
as it is on the product that may come from implementation.
For a complete list of the National Head Start Performance Standards go to: Standards