In a softly lit classroom in a Chicago suburb, 14 children curled up on their cots, dreaming and lightly snoring in concert with a gentle lullaby. It was naptime.
Allison Couzins, a Head Start teacher for Brightpoint, the organization I lead, sat at her computer, catching up on some emails as she kept an eye on her students, all 3- to 5-year-olds from low-income families attending Head Start, the federally funded early child care and education program for children and families.
“The best way to help people be successful is to start when they’re little,” the teacher whispered, careful not to wake them.
All of the nearly 1,000 foster youth Brightpoint serves annually are categorically eligible for Head Start, a significant connection at a time of instability in their lives. This should also be the case for the thousands more children we work with who remain with their parents.
We must make it easier for families to enroll in Head Start, particularly those struggling to keep their families whole, especially in light of promising research about the ability of the program to help prevent entries into foster care.
At Brightpoint, a leading child and family nonprofit in Illinois serving more than 37,000 people, we have shifted our focus in recent years to keeping families together and preventing children from being placed in foster care. That objective requires connecting kids and families to the most effective programs in the communities we serve.
There are clear long-term financial benefits to starting early with our most vulnerable children. Research backs a return on investment of at least 13% per year for birth-to-5 programs for disadvantaged children, according to James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economics professor at the University of Chicago. Those gains are realized through improved health, education, employment and social behavior outcomes.
Head Start works. In red states and in blue states, in rural and urban communities throughout the U.S., the program is preparing about 750,000 children in the U.S. for a brighter future. Parents are supported with wraparound services, everything from mental health counseling to job and housing resources and referrals, that they otherwise might not be able to access.
It’s a true lifeline for families like Maria Hernandez and her three foster children, who also happen to be her grandchildren. Two of her “foster babies,” Gianni, 5, and Aaron, 1, attend one of our Brightpoint Head Start programs.
Previously, the children were in a volatile situation, Hernandez said. Now they’re thriving within the center’s safety and structure. Gianni, who has learned to better communicate with others, is on track to be ready for kindergarten next year.
Meanwhile Maria has taken advantage of the resources for parents, including a class on conscious discipline, which has taught her how to assist her grandchildren — and herself — in processing their emotions.
“This is an amazing place,” Hernandez said. “It helps us in so many ways.”
Recent research, which should be expanded upon, suggests that Head Start does more than develop children and provide a safe space for them to be. It might also help families stay together. A 2017 study found that among a small sample of youth whose parents had previous contact with the child welfare system, those participating in Head Start were 93 percent less likely to be placed in foster care than kids who received no early childhood education program.
That’s why we’re advocating for categorical eligibility for all children deemed to be at risk of entering foster care. Currently, kids in foster care are automatically eligible for Head Start programs, regardless of their parents’ income, but children at risk of child welfare removal who remain in the care of their families are not.
Extending automatic eligibility for children at imminent risk of entering foster care falls squarely in line with the intent of the Family First Prevention Services Act signed into law during the first Trump Administration in 2018.
Doing so likely would “reduce the denominator” — to borrow a phrase from Alex Adams, the assistant secretary for family support at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — when it comes to the ratio of foster homes and youth in foster care.
Head Start represents the very best of us. Kind. Inclusive. Respectful. (Plus, naptime!)
But you can’t run a program like Head Start on hope alone. Strong support and expanded access are essential to keeping kids safe, strengthening families together, and spending less. The Trump Administration should seize this moment to protect and strengthen Head Start for the children and families who can’t afford to wait.
