Providing Comprehensive Services to Infants and Toddlers and Their Families. Findings from the National Descriptive Study of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships. OPRE Report 2020-70

When combined with high quality early care and education, comprehensive services are intended to support families in their role as caregivers and foster the health and well-being of children. Connecting children and families to these services is a foundational feature of the Head Start and Early Head Start (EHS) models. Partnerships between EHS and other early care and education settings hold promise for expanding access to comprehensive services for infants, toddlers, and their families. Specifically, EHS-Child Care (EHS-CC) Partnerships may extend the reach of comprehensive services to all children enrolled in partnering child care centers and family child care homes (that is, children in partnership and nonpartnership slots). This brief draws on data from the national descriptive study of EHS-CC Partnerships to describe the range of services offered to children in both partnership and nonpartnership slots and their families. The national descriptive study was designed to develop a rich knowledge base about the EHS programs, community-based child care centers, and family child care providers participating in a 2015 federal grants program supporting the development of EHS-CC Partnerships and aiming to increase access to high quality infant-toddler care for low-income families. [For "Working Together for Children and Families: Findings from the National Descriptive Study of Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships. OPRE Report 2019-16," see ED606742.]