by Lois Elfman
Head Start services and on-campus childcare centers can help student parents earn their degrees and establish long-term economic security.
That’s the findings from a new report titled, “Head Start-College Partnerships as a Strategy for Promoting Family Economic Success: A Study of Benefits, Challenges, and Promising Programs,” released by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR).
The report explored the possible impact of on-campus or campus-affiliated Head Start programs for student parents and examined one-on-one, individualized support for parents to help them through challenges so they can successfully achieve educational completion.
“The model provides a lot of the support we know helps student parents succeed,” said Lindsey Reichlin Cruse, study director at IWPR, and one of the authors of the report. “We thought that if we were to profile these partnerships that do exist, we could provide some guidance for how Head Start can be seen as one mechanism for helping these student parents’ childcare needs while providing supports that can help them graduate.”
