Head Start Collaboration Project

• Home Visiting
• Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect (PCAN) Training

Home Visiting

Families moving from welfare to work require a range of supports and services to meet their economic needs, gain the education and training required to obtain sustainable employment, and raise healthy children. Collaboration Project staff are working with the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy and the New York State Department of Health on efforts to develop a comprehensive system for identifying and meeting the needs of vulnerable families. The system would include several components including: screening all pregnant women and their families early in the prenatal period, making appropriate referrals for needed services, and providing comprehensive home visiting services for families identified as vulnerable or at-risk.

The provision of home visiting services would be based on community and individual family needs. Included in the array of home visiting programs that would comprise the system are: Nurse Family Partnership, Healthy Families New York, Parent Child Home Programs and Early Head Start that provide a either exclusively home visiting services or a combination of home-based and center-based services.

Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect (PCAN)  Training

Recognizing the role early educators and child care providers can play in the primary prevention of child maltreatment, a state team including the Head Start Collaboration Project applied for and was one of six state teams accepted for participation in “State Partnerships for Prevention: Reducing the Risk of Maltreatment of Very Young Children” by the National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families (Zero to Three). 

Through a partnership of the Head Start Collaboration Project, the State Child Care Administrator, the Children and Family Trust Fund, New York City’s Administration for Children Services, State Education Department, and Prevent Child Abuse New York, a multi-disciplinary training team was selected to ensure statewide availability of the training in various programs serving infants, toddlers and their families. The cadre of trainers trained staff and administrators of child care programs, home visiting programs, early intervention programs, public television, Family Resource Centers, Early Head Start and Head Start programs, Universal Prekindergarten programs, and New York City’s Community Partnership Initiative and Rethinking Child Care Initiatives.

Staff continue to pursue the integration of the PCAN training into existing training requirements such as the child care licensure training, as appropriate; and cooperate with the New York State Early Childhood Advisory Council (link to the ECAC page once it is established)  to establish a state plan to prevent child abuse consistent with the state’s Early Childhood Plan to “support community efforts to help families develop protective factors that serve to prevent child abuse and neglect.”