Effectiveness of an Enrichment Program for Young Children Enrolled in Head Start Programs

The Developmental Screening, Monitoring, and Enrichment (DSME) program for low-income children and families is an initiative developed to support the goal of the Healthy People 2020 and 2030 that aims to increase the number of healthy young children to be ready for school. The 8-week DSME program focuses on reducing health disparities and improving the health of low-income children. A quasi-experimental research study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the DSME program in 43 children enrolled in three Head Start programs. The children received weekly enrichment activities for 8 weeks. Each child was administered with Denver Developmental Screening Test-II at three intervals (week 1, week 4, and week 8) to identify their developmental levels and monitor their progress in four areas including personal-social, fine-motor, language, and gross-motor. Additionally, the parents received two 1-hour educational trainings to learn about children's developmental milestones and strategies used to monitor and address their children's developmental concerns. The data were analyzed using repeated measures ANOVA and paired t-test. The DSME program was found to be effective and can be easily implemented to any Head Start programs. The DSME program can help to increase the proportion of young children who are ready for school.