Helping foster children access the support they need
SRI’s research points to practical ways to expand Head Start for children in foster care while preserving continuity to help them thrive.
Head Start currently supports more than 700,000 children nationwide, pairing early education with health, developmental, and family services. For children in foster care, the benefits are clear: stronger academic and behavioral outcomes, better social skills, and positive approaches to learning. Today, only about 1 in 5 young children in foster care are enrolled.
SRI’s Todd Grindal, Anne Partika, and Kirby Chow wanted to know more. They surveyed childcare providers and spoke with foster parents, faith-based leaders, and state officials about what it takes to connect children in foster care with quality early care.
What they found: foster families want access to reliable childcare, but the realities of foster care don’t always align with how Head Start programs operate.
Expanding Head Start’s flexibility and reducing enrollment barriers could make a meaningful difference. But researchers emphasize that access is half the equation. What makes Head Start valuable for foster children is its comprehensiveness: coordinated health, mental health, and family support delivered alongside early learning, and safeguards that help kids stay enrolled.
The path forward is to expand access and preserve what makes Head Start work: strong coordination between programs and child welfare agencies, and support systems that keep children thriving once they arrive.
A short timeline of SRI’s history in the field of education:
1965: The federal government created Project Head Start as an eight-week summer school pilot to address systemic poverty by boosting school-readiness for low-income children.
1969: SRI helped develop the Head Start program, which had expanded from its original summer pilot.
1969–1972: SRI carried out testing and data collection in the field, with a particular emphasis on the second and third years of early education. This fieldwork helped assess how the program was performing as it scaled up.
1969–1975: SRI’s work contributed to a groundbreaking methodology that has been widely replicated in the US and abroad. SRI didn’t just evaluate Head Start once, but its research became a model for how large-scale early education programs are studied more broadly.
Today: That legacy continues through SRI Education, which continues to produce groundbreaking research and development in the field of education. SRI has consistently built evidence-based methodologies that have shaped education programs since its beginnings.