Our 2013-2016 Business Plan Goals
Our Strategic Priorities – An Update
Expand Head Start programs to meet the needs of
vulnerable children and families.
zPromote community collaboration to meet the early
learning needs of children and families.
How did we do?
How did we do?
• During the 2013-2014 school year, 508 children and
families, comprised of 891 parents and caregivers
participated in the Head Start program.
• We participated in 2 Research projects with E4C Head Start
program and Oliver Centre, which focused on kindergarten
readiness and assessing early learning programming and
early experiences. Both were done in an effort to evaluate
our programming and learn more about the needs our
children have.
• ABC Head Start piloted a Summer Start program at the
Mill Woods Campus location from July through August 1
5th, 2014. ABC Head Start families and waitlisted
families were given the opportunity to attend this six week
pilot program to receive social and emotional supports
through the summer months. We provided continued
supports to 14 children and 12 additional waitlisted
children.
• In an effort to provide comprehensive supports, we
clustered three of our sites. This allowed us to create Mill
Woods Campus. (3 sites in 1 location). This has yielded
excellent results for the staff teams and students.
• We expanded our program capacity by 82 children.
Increase family supports to strengthen child and family
well-being, and reduce poverty.
• We continue to be a part of the Interagency Head Start
Network.
• We are a part of the Edmonton HR Cluster, which includes
ABC Head Start, Boyle Street, John Howard Society,
Norwood Centre, CMHA and Terra Centre. This
collaboration provides significant administrative and
resource cost reduction.
• We participate in many community based professional
development opportunities and work collaboratively with
our partners to meet the needs of our families.
Promote service excellence and accountability.
How did we do?
How did we do?
• Evaluated the effectiveness of family services to increase
the well being, advocacy skills and self reliance of families.
• We recruited, trained and engaged some of the most
outstanding staff in the field and created successful
working teams to support our children and families by
developing and implementing a new HR model
encompassing orientation, training & development,
recognition and performance management.
• We offered Summer Intake for the first time, in an effort to
accommodate families and reduce application processing
time.
An overview
Goal 3: Communities have the resources and capacity to
support to support the early learning of children and families.
Where are we?
ABC Head Start works closely with reputable and diverse
community partners to develop and offer best practice
resources. Support and promoting family well-being and
self-reliance is our goal and we were able to do this by
staying connected within our community and by
understanding the diverse needs of our families; including
multicultural integration, parenting, settlement and
employment challenges.
Goal 1: Head Start Children are ready for learning and
kindergarten, and develop to their fullest potential.
We are so proud of our Head Start children and our site staff!
Of the children surveyed:
83% were ready for Kindergarten
96% were adjusting to Kindergarten
81% had average or above average skills compared to their
peers
73% had average or above average social-emotional skills
76% had average or above average communication skills
88% had average to above average cognitive skills
74% had average to above average pre-literacy skills
Goal 4: ABC Head Start is recognized as a Centre of
excellence in early learning and family supports.
We have recently implemented a new fundraising strategy to
achieve sustainable, diversified and flexible funding to meet
community children’s needs now and in the future.
We created a new marketing plan and fund development
framework, which included expanding our social media reach
and participating in and hosting fundraisers and events to
increase the ABC Head Start profile in the community.
Goal 2: Families are healthy, self-reliant and support children
in reaching their full potential.
Providing family supports is essential to ensuring overall
wellbeing and success. We are happy to report: of the families
surveyed:
We remain well connected to a variety of organizations in
Edmonton and maintain these professional partnerships
through conversation, professional development, referral
services and call to action requests.
99% were satisfied with Head Start
93% indicated greater parenting skills
86% had greater knowledge of family resources
96% indicated they were doing more to help their child
develop
95% indicated they have a better understanding of child
development
91% stated they felt less stressed
• We hosted our first Tapestry fundraiser, launched the
Literacy Backpack campaign and secured sustainable
funding from a variety of diverse sources.
• Continued to provide supports to family and children,
including expansion and support groups.
• We engaged our community through a Christmas Giving
Campaign and promoted our agency through social media
and community engagements.
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