by Lorelei Brush, Ph.D., Sharon Deich, Kerry Traylor and Nancy Pindus
This report was prepared by staff of Pelavin Research Institute and The Urban Institute under contract to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
March 1995
Over the past 10 years, the number of low-income mothers with young children needing the services of full-day programs has increased dramatically. Many factors, including the adoption of the Job Opportunity and Basic Skills (JOBS) program, homelessness, and increased demands on the child welfare system have contributed to this growing need. In order to better serve their children and families, some Head Start grantees have developed programs to meet the requirements for longer hours of service.
The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which full-day services are currently offered by a small group of Head Start Grantees. This study does not include all grantees that are providing full-day services, but it provides an in-depth look at eight grantees that fund extended hours by combining resources from a variety of sources. Factors considered in the selection of grantees include the geographic location of the grantee; the size of its funded enrollment and its full-day enrollment; the source(s) of funding used for the extended hours; and the structure of the full-day option. Data were collected during 2-day site visits to each grantee. In addition to the director of each program, fiscal staff, component coordinators, teaching staff, and staff from collaborating and other child care agencies in the community were interviewed.
Among the grantees, three distinct modes of service provision were utilized: (1) wraparound care, in which funding from sources other than Head Start is used to expand the core Head Start day; (2) wrap-in care, in which Head Start grantees contract with another child care provider and fund the set of services needed to allow the contracted program to meet Head Start standards; and (3) connected care, in which grantees contract with existing child care programs to provide children with supervised care before and/or after the Head Start day. Connected care providers are not expected to meet Head Start's Performance Standards. It should be noted that even among these grantees who are providing full-day care, children attending for a full day make up only a small part of the full enrollment in most of these programs.
In addition to the traditional Head Start portion of the day, each full-day provider had to develop a program for the extended hours. Four of the grantees had a short structured activity in the afternoon and scheduled free play for the rest of the time. The others found that structured activities were too often interrupted during the afternoon, as children left for the day. For these grantees, the time after naps and snack was spent exclusively in free play.
Grantees also had to find new and innovative ways to schedule parent activities, home visits, and teacher training. Whereas staff from part-day programs can work with parents during the day, staff in full-day programs cannot because parents with children in full-day programs are at work or in training during these times. Overall, grantees were quite successful at finding ways to integrate parent activities and home visits into the full-day programs, using such methods as scheduling visits and activities at convenient times for parents (e.g., during breaks between college terms, at the end of work shifts), constructing activities that could support the program but be done in the evenings or on weekends (e.g., prepare materials for an activity, help renovate a room), and keeping a log for each child in which parents and teachers make regular entries. Grantees were also creative in devising ways to provide training to full-day staff, including liberal use of substitutes and closing periodically for training days.
Unlike part-day programs that receive nearly all of their funding as a grant from Head Start, the grantees in this study were piecing together funding from a variety of sources to meet the requirements of a full-day program. A variety of issues regarding the coordination of funds came to light during the interviews.
Each grantee had to develop a strategy for allocating funding from their various funding sources. Among the eight grantees, five different strategies were employed. The first method, which is used by two of the sample's Head Start grantees, involves dividing costs among the participating agencies so that each agency alone pays for a particular line item. For example, one participating agency may pay all facilities expenses and Head Start may pay all non-facilities expenses. By keeping the funding separated, grantees greatly simplify the accounting process. The remaining four methods require the Head Start agency to manage multiple funding streams, but demonstrate different ways of allocating costs to funding sources. One grantee used no allocation formula at all; instead, this grantee pooled all of its funds into a single account from which all bills were paid. Another grantee assigned each line item to one funding source only, so that Head Start paid 100 percent of certain line items and its other source paid 100 percent of other items. Two grantees used a single allocation formula to divide costs across funding sources: all line item costs were allocated proportionally by number of children funded by each source or amount of income from each source. Finally, two grantees split costs across funding sources according to formulas tailored specifically for each item.
Other funding issues continue to hamper grantees in their ability to provide full-day services. Parental loss of eligibility for non-Head Start funding was a problem for all grantees. Receipt of full-day services is generally contingent upon parental employment status; parents must be working or in training to qualify for full-day services. When parents stop working or drop out of school, even temporarily, the children are no longer eligible for the funding that pays for the non-Head Start portion of the day. Grantees have developed different strategies to deal with this issue, but all feel that it is a continuing problem.
Retrospective reimbursements are also problematic for most grantees. Payments to cover the extended portion of the Head Start day are almost always reimbursed retrospectively. Cash-flow problems often arise as grantees need to pay their bills before the reimbursements are received. In this case, grantees either rely on sponsoring agencies to cover the shortfalls or borrow from one part of their program to pay for another.
Many grantees also struggle to keep their budgets in the black. The reimbursement rates received from many state and local sources are simply too low to cover the cost of following Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day. For example, child-staff ratios and staffing patterns that are allowable under these other programs often fail to meet Head Start requirements. Although grantees have found ways to provide the required funding to maintain Head Start quality, shortfalls that require financial assistance from sponsoring agencies still do occur.
For grantees using wrap-in or connected care, ensuring a high quality of care from contracted providers was at issue. For the wrap-in programs, all providers follow the Head Start Performance Standards throughout the day, and issues of quality, for the most part, are related to bringing new sites into compliance with the standards (new sites often need time to upgrade facilities and train staff). For the one connected care provider, where Head Start Performance Standards are not followed by contracted providers, the quality of these contracted programs is a major concern.
Finally, all grantees indicated an urgent need to fund additional full-day services for infants and toddlers. As more mothers seek employment, having the option of serving the younger siblings of Head Start children in the same facility is a necessity. This coupled with the multiple risks faced by many very young children points to the urgent need for earlier intervention.
The findings from this study point to the following issues for policymakers to address:
Although this study provided considerable information about the delivery of full-day services by drawing upon funding from multiple sources, many questions regarding the provision of full-day services for Head Start children and families still remain. For instance, neither this study nor Head Start data sources can provide information on the number of Head Start children who currently receive more than 8 hours a day of care or are in programs that run 12 months. Other important questions include: how do the various modes of care affect the well-being of the children; how do co-located services for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers affect family choices of care situations; and what impact does full-day service have on the self-sufficiency of families? Further research is required to respond to these questions.