Keulen said Head Start has over 1700 federal regulations that they must comply with and the federal government provide ongoing trainings to the staff to help them achieve these regulations.
“It’s a wonderful program with heavily regulated and the program itself has to build within its services to every system and we do ongoing monitoring to make sure that all of these regulations are achieve on time and achieve with quality,” Keulen said in an interview last week.
Keulen was here for a series of training for Head Start social workers, staff and Board of Directors.
Last week she conducted training about family and community partnerships for the social workers and policy council for the Board of Directors.
“The excellent part of the program is to challenge the staff to come up with strategies that would be appropriate for the area based on different cultures, different languages and different ethnicities and religions because the program has to be respectful of the diversity which makes super rich in its service to the community,” Keulen said.
The consultant said Head Start have nine written formalize agreement partnership with different agencies who work collaborate with Head Start to meet the community’s various needs.
Head Start Director Eydeline Ikeya said these agencies are Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, Division of Labor and Work force Investment Act Office. These are the major agencies that provided services with Head Start.
The Director added that they have to coordinate with the public schools and the special education in providing services to the students because 52 of the enrolled Head Start students have disabilities.
Head Start has 28 teachers teaching for 509 students.
Each classroom has a minimum of 17 students with two Head Start staff and one volunteer.
Head Start staff will also engage in self assessment training to see how effective the program is and if it’s following the federal regulations.
“Through this self assessment training, the staff will see the picture where they need to improve and where they excel so it’s a good way to assess if they are achieving the objectives or not,” Keulen said.
