Strengthening Whole Family Comprehensive Supports in Early Childhood: Implications for Head Start and Early Head Start

America’s young children and families are facing historic challenges and possibilities. Families are confronting long-standing barriers to opportunity, and also challenges related to a global pandemic, gun violence, and climate change. However, families and communities are resilient, resourceful and motivated to provide their children with a promising future. 

Research points to supporting the strengths and needs of children via “early, continuous, intensive, and comprehensive” “whole child-whole family” programs, such as those delivered by Head Start and Early Head Start. This brief discusses: 

• why "whole-child whole-family" approaches matter
• what we know about their impacts on children, families, and caregivers
• what we are learning about best practices and how to enhance support for professionals working with families, and
• how up-to-date scientific and practice insights can inform Head Start and Early Head Start policies to best promote healthy child development, learning, and thriving in the 21st century.
  

This brief is authored by Joan Wasser Gish, Boston College Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children; Rachel Chazan-Cohen, University of Connecticut Applied Research on Children Lab; and Tassy Warren, Harvard Center on the Developing Child.