Growing Healthy: A Guide for Head Start Health Managers
This guide provides suggestions for building healthy, active lives for everyone. Staff can share this information with parents as a reminder to make healthy choices every day.
The Medical Home and Head Start Working Together
Learn about the medical home and why it's important to connect families so their child can receive continuous, accessible medical care.
Embracing Our Future
Four children in Head Start programs are featured in this 18-minute streaming video about Head Start health services. Designed as training for parents, Health Services Advisory Committee members, staff, and Policy Council and Governing Bodies, the video provides a basic picture of the range of health services offered by Head Start.
Choose and Use Guide for Finding Social-Emotional Programs for Parents
Head Start programs are increasingly involved in efforts to assist adult family members in gaining parenting skills that can both promote positive social-emotional development and prevent challenging behaviors. In recent years, a number of formal parenting curricula have been developed and researched. We have identified five such programs with promising effects.
Understanding Stress and Resilience in Young Children
Ongoing research continues to show us how adversity and toxic stress in early childhood can have a negative impact throughout a person's life. These videos are designed to help them understand what toxic stress is, what it does to a person, and easy things to do to help prevent it.
Motivational Interviewing Suite
These short videos provide examples of how to use MI strategies in everyday conversations between staff and families. Staff can use these videos to identify skills to enhance their relationships with families.
Health Services to Promote Attendance
Good attendance leads to lifelong learning and positive habits necessary for school and work. When young children are chronically absent from Head Start, Early Head Start, or child care, often they are likely to continue to be chronically absent in elementary school.
The Well-Visit Planner for Families
Use this Internet-based tool to help identify and prioritize health risks and concerns before the well-child appointment
Your Vision Screening and Eye Health Program
Uncorrected vision problems can affect a child’s development and school readiness. Learn about evidence-based tools that Head Start programs can use to screen children’s vision.
Facilitating a Referral for Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families
Head Start program staff are required to work in partnership with families to ensure they have access to any needed mental health services. This brief is designed to: (1) provide guidance for Head Start program staff to identify mental health providers who best meet a family's needs, culture, and personality, and (2) offer ideas to overcome access barriers.