National AIAN Head Start Collaboration Needs Assessment 2009

N

82

Disabilities; Health Services; Program Effectiveness; School Readiness; Family Literacy; Needs Assessment; Cooperation; Alaska Natives; American Indians; Community Services; Child Care; Alignment (Education); Homeless People; Professional Development; Federal Programs; Early Childhood Education; Preschool Children

The Office of Head Start/Region 11 serves nearly 23,000 American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) children in 26 States throughout the country: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. According to the Head Start Program Information Report (PIR) for the 2007-2008 program year, there were 152 AIAN Head Start programs in the region and 42 AIAN Early Head Start programs (many of these being joint HS/EHS programs). OHS/Region 11 supports approximately 154 grantees--each a tribal sovereign nation or consortia of tribal nations--with governing bodies that are independent from the States. The Head Start Collaboration Needs Assessment (CNA) was designed in 2008 by a work group of Head Start State Collaboration Directors (HSSCDs) over the course of several months. Touching on the nine key priority areas pertaining to collaboration as outlined in the "Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007" legislation (i.e., Child Care; Community Services; Education/Head Start-Pre K Partnership Development; Education/Head Start Transition and Alignment with K-12; Family/Child Assistance; Family Literacy; Health Services; Services for Children Experiencing Homelessness; Services for Children with Disabilities) and also including the area of Professional Development, members of the work group selected topic areas on which they would like to focus, then created questions that, from their experience as HSSCDs, were most significant vis-a-vis pertaining to Head Start's extent of partnering with service providers; and the extent of performing specific collaboration-related tasks. Open-ended questions pertaining to grantee's description of other issues/challenges, and a description of what works well in addressing needs in each specific topic area were also included. Members of the work group then shared their questions with the larger group who reviewed them and suggested modifications, as appropriate. This paper presents their findings. National AIAN Head Start Collaboration Needs Assessment is appended. (Contains 5 footnotes.)

ERIC

2012

ED537244