Head Start is a program of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families.

Created in 1965, Head Start is the longest-running program to address systemic poverty in the United States. As of late 2005, more than 22 million pre-school aged children have participated in Head Start. The $6.8+ billion dollar budget for 2005 provided services to more than 905,000 children, 57% of whom were four years old or older, and 43% three years old or younger. Services were provided by 1,604 different programs operating more than 48,000 classrooms scattered across every state (and nearly every county) at an average cost of $7,222 per child. The staff consists of nearly 212,000 paid personnel in addition six times as many volunteers.

History

Head Start was started as part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. A key part of the Great Society domestic agenda, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 authorized programs to help meet the needs of disadvantaged preschool children. A panel of child development experts drew up this program at the request of the Federal Government, and the program became Project Head Start.

The Office of Economic Opportunity launched Project Head Start as an eight-week summer program in 1965. The project was designed to help end poverty by providing preschool children from low-income families with a program that would meet emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs.

Head Start was then transferred to the Office of Child Development in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later the Department of Health and Human Services) by the Nixon Administration in 1969. Today it is a program within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the HHS. In FY 1995, the Early Head Start program was established to serve children from birth to three years of age in recognition of the mounting evidence that the earliest years matter a great deal to children's growth and development.1Programs are administered locally by non-profit organizations and local education agencies such as school systems. Head Start is a program for children age 3 to 5 in the United States.

Programs

• Early Head Start - promotes healthy prenatal outcomes, promotes healthy family functioning, and strengthens the development of infants and toddlers beginning as young as newborn infants.
• Head Start- helps to create healthy development in low-income children. Programs offer a wide variety of services, that depend on a child's and each family's heritage and experience, to influence all aspects of a child's development and learning.
• Migrant and Seasonal Program Branch- provides the children of migrant and seasonal farm workers who meet income and other eligibility guidelines with Head Start services
• American Indian-Alaska Native Program Branch- provides American Indian and Alaska Native children and families with services such as: health care, educational, nutritional, socialization, as well as other services promoting school readiness. Services are primarily for disadvantaged preschool children, and infants and toddlers.