2-027 - Different Models to Support Parents Through Early Care and Education Programs: Complimentary or At Odds?

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Services for low-income parents and families have been an essential element of quality early childhood education programs since the development of landmark legislation for Head Start and Early Head Start, Childcare Development Block Grants, and Race-to-the Top Early Learning Challenge (Lombardi et al., 2014). Accordingly, nearly all early care and education (ECE) programs emphasize the importance of family engagement. Yet, there are a number of different ways to support parents through ECE programming. This panel brings together a set of papers that highlight varying approaches for supporting parents among a diverse range of ECE programs that serve low-income children in the United States.

Paper 1 examines the most common ways in which ECE programs— including Head Start, state pre-k, and subsidy-serving child care providers— support parents and the capacity of these programs to engage with them across a wide spectrum of parent-oriented activities (e.g., parent involvement, family support services, and parent human capital advancement). Paper 2 takes a work-support approach and examines whether subsidy-serving child care providers are supporting parents’ employment needs by offering care that is available during work hours and proximate to their homes and jobs. Paper 3 examines the effect of a two-generation human capital intervention— which uses Head Start as a platform to offer sector-based training to parents— on parent and child outcomes. Collectively, the panel seeks to shed light on whether different parent support frameworks are complimentary or at odds within the current early care and education landscape.

Sub Unit

• Social Policy

Chair

• Eboni Howard, AIR

Discussant

• Jane Waldfogel, Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• Early Care and Education Centers’ Readiness to Support Parents in the 21st Century - Presenting Author: Terri Sabol, Northwestern University; Amy Sanchez, Northwestern University; Andrea Busby, Northwestern University

• Child Care Market Conditions and Low-Income Families' Needs: Identifying Mismatches in Four Select Communities - David Alexander, Illinois Action for Children; Lina Breslav, Urban Institute; Presenting Author: Amy Claessens, University of Chicago; Erica Greenberg, Urban Institute; Julia R Henly, University of Chicago; Heather Sandstrom, Urban Institute; Marcia Stoll, Illinois Action for Children

• The Added Effects of a Two-Generation Human Capital Intervention on Low-Income Parents and Their Young Children in Head Start - Lindsey Chase-Lansdale, Northwestern University; Presenting Author: Teresa Sommer, Northwestern University; Elise Chor, Northwestern University; Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Teachers College, Columbia University; Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University; Christopher King, Ray Marshall Center, University of Texas at Austin; Amanda Sheffield Morris, Oklahoma State University