Murchison Road Head Start

Head Start is a Federally funded child development program that provides free social and educational opportunities for income eligible children from ages 0-5, including children with special needs and pregnant women. The program is designed to prepare eligible children with essential skills needed to enter the public school system.

To support the overall goal of improving social competence, Head Start embraces a core set of values, including commitments to:
Establish a supportive learning environment for children, parents, and staf, in which the process of enhancing
awareness, reining skills, and increasing understanding are valued and promoted;
Recognize that the members of the Head Start community-children, families, and staf-have roots in many cultures.
Head Start families and staf, working together as a team, can efectively promote respectful, sensitive, and proac
tive approaches to diversity issues;
Understand that the empowerment of families occurs when program governance is a responsibility shared by
families, governing bodies, and staf, and when the ideas and opinions of families are heard and respected.
Embrace a comprehensive vision of health for children, families, and staf, which assures that basic health needs
are met, encourages practices that prevent future illnesses and injuries, and promotes positive, culturally relevant
health behaviors that enhances lifelong well-being;
Respect the importance of all aspects of an individuals development, including social, emotional, cognitive, and
physical growth;
Build a community in which each child and adult is treated as an individual while, at the same time, a sense of
belonging to the group is reinforced;
Foster relationships with the larger community, so that families and staf are respected and served by a network of
community agencies in partnership with one another; and
Develop a continuum of care, education, and services that allow stable, uninterrupted support to families and
children during and after their Head Start experience.

Child Ages:

3 years - 5 years

Licenses & Accreditations:

North Carolina Division of Child Development and Early Education

Special Needs:

Head Start and Cumberland County Schools maintain a collaborative agreement to meet the unique needs of
children with disabilities, providing a wide range of services to include: social, educational, nutrition, medical,
speech, occupational and physical therapy.

Preschool:

Yes