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The Beneficial Head Start Program Essay

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The Head Start program is a beneficial one that helps youth overcome educational setbacks. In order for one to understand the benefits of the program one must know what its goals are, how its goals continue to be accomplished, what specific setbacks are remedied from it and how others feel about it.

Head Start is a comprehensive child development program that has an overall goal to prepare children from low-income families for school (The Administration For Children And Families, 2002). To prepare a child for school the program has the goal of meeting educational, health, social service, and parental needs. “Head Start also wants to help bring about a greater degree of social competence in these children (Mallory and Goldsmith, …show more content…

The social services aspect of needs is met after the needs are identified. The family would be eligible for community outreach programs, referrals, recruitment and enrollment of other children, and emergency assistance and or crisis intervention (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2002).

Although the Head Start program focuses on preparing the children for school it does offer outreach and training activities to assist parents with understanding their child’s development and their overall parenting skills (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2001). Parental needs are met when parents receive classes or workshops that educate them on their child’s development allowing parents to create activities for their child at home as well as when they are in Head Start (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2002).

“The program also encourages parents to: volunteer in the classroom, participate in home visits by the teacher at least twice a year, enroll in job training programs, literacy programs, or other adult education programs, serve on policy making bodies, apply to work in the program, and serve in state, regional, or national Head Start Associations (Mallory and Goldsmith, 2002).”

Head Start has already accomplished the goal of affecting services available for low-income families and children. This is being accomplished due to better resource and referral services (Blank, 2002). 20,302,000 children have been enrolled in the

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