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Head Start’s Footprint: A Focus on Rural Communities, Children with Disabilities and Vital Health Services
This month, Head Start will celebrate its 60th anniversary. Most Americans know Head Start as a preschool program for children in low-income households. But Head Start is much more than that. It provides wide-ranging services that help families meet their basic needs and get ahead. It plays a particularly salient role in the lives of children in rural communities, children with disabilities, and children who otherwise lack access to reliable and consistent health services and nutritious meals.
For families in rural areas, Head Start is the backbone of the child care and early learning system, and has an outsized role in developmental and health screenings, and connecting families to critical health services. In some rural counties across the US, Head Start makes up over 90% of the child care options. Likewise, children with disabilities benefit from Head Start’s individualized approach and its commitment to inclusive education. This is by design. Since 1972, Head Start programs have been expected to enroll children with disabilities in at least 10% of their total slots. And Head Start remains one of the few early childhood programs with a robust emphasis on health screenings, preventative care, and follow-up health services. For many families, the program serves as a crucial entry point into the broader health care system—providing not only basic screenings for vision, hearing, and developmental milestones but also facilitating referrals for specialized services when needed.
This report reviews data and research to explore Head Start’s footprint in the United States, with a focus on:
1️⃣ The role Head Start plays in rural communities, particularly in access to child care and health services.
2️⃣ The benefits of Head Start in the lives of children with disabilities, especially those in rural communities.
3️⃣ The foundational support Head Start provides to children and families through food and nutrition, universal screenings, and connections to health care services.