What is Early Head Start?
Early Head Start (EHS) is a federally funded community-based program for low-income families with infants and toddlers and pregnant women. Its mission is simple: • to promote healthy prenatal outcomes for pregnant women, • to enhance the development of very young children, and • to promote healthy family functioning. EHS evolved out of Head Start’s long history of providing services to infants and toddlers through Parent Child Centers, Comprehensive Child Development Centers (CCDPs) and Migrant Head Start programs. Recent advances in the field of infant development make this an especially exciting time to have Head Start formally expand its family to include the provision of Early Head Start services. In 1994, the Secretary of Health and Human Services formed an Advisory Committee on Services for Families with Infants and Toddlersto design EHS. EHS evolved out of Head Start’s long history of providing services to infants and toddlers through Parent and Child Centers, Comprehensive Chil
Early Head Start is a federally-funded, community-based program that provides early, continuous, intensive and comprehensive child development and family support services to low-income pregnant women and families with children under age three. The ultimate goal is enhancing children’s competence, which is accomplished by providing high quality and individualized services for the child and family, strengthening families as primary nurturers of their child, and enhancing parent-child relationships.
