Over the course of two years, volunteer parents and community members went door-to-door in Chicago’s low- and moderate-income neighborhoods conducting surveys of more than 5,000 parents and caregivers. The purpose? To better understand the barriers to preschool and Head Start faced by low-income families. Following the surveys, the project convened two community meetings to engage parents and stakeholders in an analysis of potential policy solutions.
As a result of their research, they discovered about half of eligible preschool aged children are not in a program of any kind. Their findings including the most common challenges to getting children enrolled and participating as well as recommended solutions are presented in the report, “Why Isn’t Johnny in Preschool?” Some highlights:
- Transportation was the number one barrier. Families did not have cars; found public transportation too difficult; were afraid or physically unable to walk their children to school especially grandparent caregivers; and/or struggled getting multiple children to different sites at different times.
- Preschool schedules that don’t accommodate work schedules and child care needs and various options are needed – all day, hours that match school hours of older siblings, and half-day programs at different times.
- Parents find the enrollment process to be too hard. Parents lack information on options or are overwhelmed by all the options, families aren’t aware of free programs, or which programs they qualify for.
- Programs should raise awareness of the importance of preschool and break down stereotypes that children are too young to go to school.
- Families worry about the loss of state child care subsidies, especially when it is a source of income for extended family and are concerned about the cost of child care co-payments.
Do these same barriers exist in Tulsa? Who are the hard to reach parents in our communities? What are effective practices to encourage enrollment and if we eliminate barriers to enrollment without addressing barriers to participation, what will we gain?
In responding to a somewhat unrelated question recently posed to staff, a teacher from one of our Early Childhood Sites created her own list of barriers many of which parallel those found in the report: many families don’t know our services are free; families believe it’s difficult to sign up or they don’t know how or where; and parents are looking for child care and believe early childhood education is “out of their reach” prescreening themselves from programs labeled as early childhood education.
What barriers have you seen?
