There are a couple of ways that Head Start is at odds with social work values. The first, coming from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service website (2017), “Head Start grants are awarded directly to public or private non-profit organizations, including community-based and faith-based organizations, or for-profit agencies within a community that wish to compete for funds” (acdf.hhs.gov, para. 1).
In order to open one’s own Head Start program, one needs to have a non-profit agency… “including faith-based organizations, or for-profit agencies within a community that wish to compete for funds” (acdf.hhs.gov, 2017, para. 1). It seems problematic that a federally funded initiative would seek to align itself with any one religion. Where I work, there are many non-profit agencies doing religious work, but by aligning religion with any one Head Start, the agency distances many others who do not see religion the same as the administrators of the non-profit. Also, opening the application for Health and Human Service, shows that grants are to be given to for-profit agencies competing
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Some might even have gone from being parents of a Head Start child to coming in our program as a full teacher. After gaining further education, the former parent/ educator may wish to apply for a social work position… ultimately getting hired. Now that she/ he is in that social work position, there is immediately a conflict of interest. Social workers have less access to student files than does an assistant teacher, but since this person was a parent then an educator and now a social worker, at one time or another she/ he became familiar with a number of the children in the program. This is problematic because social workers are on a need to know basis. They cannot simply go and read everything about a