Email to HS_EHS Directors

Attachment A: Email to Head Start/Early Head Start Directors for

Recruitment of Family Service Workers for Cognitive Interviews

Hello,

Child Trends, Westat, and the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation of the Administration for Children and Families (OPRE) are working together to develop an instrument to measure relationships between Head Start Family Service Workers and the families they serve. We are hoping to interview Family Service Workers to help ensure that the questions are applicable to them and capture their unique roles and relationships with families.

As you know, it is often the collaboration between parent, teacher, and family service workers that creates an optimal supportive network both for the child at school and the parent at home. Yet, most of the research on the quality and effectiveness of Head Start and the family-provider relationship focuses on the educational intervention in the classroom, rather than on the quality of the relationship between family service workers and the families they serve.  We hope that this instrument can be used in the future to measure and monitor the quality of relationships between family service workers and families.

The interview will be about 2 hours long. Participants will be given $50 as a thank you for their time. Family Service Workers that are interested can call 1-888-418-4585 or 202-553-2900 to see if they are eligible to participate.

We would appreciate if you can pass along this information and the attached flier to Family Service Workers you think may be interested.

This collection of information is voluntary. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB control number for this collection is 0970-0420 and it expires 01/31/2015.

Thank you so much for your help with and support of this important study,