Descriptive Study of Early Head Start: Recruitment materials

Early Head Start

Family and Child

Experiences

Survey

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Administration for Children and Families

The Early Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (Baby FACES) is the largest national study of Early Head Start ever undertaken to gather information about Early Head Start programs and families served by them. Baby FACES will help us learn about the services you provide, how you provide them and give you the opportunity to showcase your program.

The Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project showed that programs had significant positive impacts on children and families, some lasting to age 5, compared to children and families in the control group. Our focus now is to learn from a nationally representative sample of programs and families, more about the specific services programs provide, how they provide them, and how children and families fare over time. Answering those questions will support continuous program improvement both nationally and at the local levels.

Mathematica will recruit 90 programs and 2,000 enrolled families to participate in this four year longitudinal study, with data collection beginning in Spring 2009. The data collected will represent Early Head Start programs and families nationally.

To understand Early Head Start better, the Baby FACES research team will collect information in several different ways from your staff and families. If your program is selected, we will identify a sample of children from two age cohorts (pregnant women/newborn and one-year-olds) and follow them over time. Each spring we will interview the program director and the classroom teachers, home visitors, and parents of the sampled children. We will ask programs to collect and report service use information about enrolled families as well. Data collection will begin in spring 2009 through Spring 2012.

Your program will receive $750 each year for participating in the Baby FACES study. Selected program families who consent to participate will be interviewed and receive $35 at each interview. We will also meet with the child and ask him or her to do a set of activities so that we can learn about children’s development. The activities we will ask the child to do are the kinds of things children do at Early Head Start. The child will also receive a gift.

All the answers you, your staff, and your families give are confidential. They will never be shared with anyone and reports will only discuss findings overall or for groups. We hope you will consider joining us in this important study and become a voice for Early Head Start programs.

Baby FACES is sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families, the government agency which oversees Early Head Start. The work is being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR). All staff members working on Baby FACES have a great deal of experience doing research with young children and their families, and have been fully trained for this project.

If you have any questions about Baby FACES, you may call Mathematica’s toll-free number X1‑888XXX-‑633XXX-‑8349 XXXX between 9 am and 9 pm Eastern Time. After these hours you may leave a message and we will return your call.

We hope you will be one of the Early Head Start programs to help us in Baby FACES 2006. Your help is valuable to us and to all Early Head Start children and families!