The Center for Community Futures offers Head Start programs invaluable resources for Community Assessments:

• Community Assessment Services: scroll down for more info; call Jim Masters at 510-459-7570 for info.

• Community Assessment: A How-To Guide for Local Head Start Programs (forthcoming)

• Information on the Santa Clara County Community Assessment we worked on.

• The Word document of the Berkeley-Albany YMCA Head Start Community Assessment we worked on.

Sample page from a Community Assessment Report we did:

Community Assessment Services by the Center for Community Futures

The Center for Community Futures can help your Head Start Program develop a comprehensive and detailed community assessment that will help you maintain full enrollment.

We have worked with local Head Start programs for more than 40 years and can offer a complete package of community assessment services meeting six Head Start performance standards:

1. Description and demographics of the service area and numbers of eligible children and their families.

2. Description of other child development and child care programs that are serving Head Start eligible children, including publicly funded State and local preschool programs, and the approximate number of Head Start eligible children served by each.

3. An estimate of the number of children with disabilities four-years old or younger, including types of disabilities and services and resources provided to these children.

4. Description of the education, health, nutrition and social service needs of Head Start eligible children and their families as described by their families.

5. Description of education, health, nutrition and social service needs of Head Start eligible children and their families as described by other institutions in the community that serve young children.

6. Description of other resources that could be used to address the needs of Head Start eligible children and their families, including assessments of their availability and accessibility.

Use Our Expertise

The 2020 Census data will soon be available, with detailed data about families, housing and economic conditions of the people in your service area. A comprehensive community assessment involves gathering, analyzing, and describing conditions and trends in:

1. Map of Service Area

2. Population of Service Area; trends and components of change since last census

3. Number and percent of population by race and ethnicity

4. Linguistic Isolation

5. Number of families with children by family status (single parent; grandparent head of household) and by ethnicity/race.

6. Number of eligible children – number and percent of children under 5 in poverty for Service Area and geographic subareas

7. Number of births and/or birth rate for the previous 5 years (as available); by status of mother (e.g., ethnicity, Medicaid status, age of mother, or other available indicators)

8. Number of eligible children - calculated from enrollment in public assistance programs (income, ranges from poverty level to 180% of poverty)

9. Number of eligible children - estimated from enrollments in federal free/reduced lunch in the Service Area (up to 130% of poverty)

10. Transportation, i.e. the access low-income families has to jobs and child care, given their location in the county

For a complete list of the tables we can prepare on your area, e-mail jmasters@cencomfut.com

Let The Center help you conduct your community assessment.