Mission Statement
Vision: Healthy, educated children in supportive families.
Mission: To educate children and support families with a broad and holistic range of supports to ensure that children ages 0-5 are prepared and ready for school.
- Partnering with Families: Partnering with families and children to ensure their health. We focus on working with the most vulnerable families (such as families who are living in poverty, families who are providing foster care and families with children who have disabilities.)
- Educating and Developing Young Children: In homes and in center-based sites; teaching children and families how to be healthy and how to support children in their development and education.
- Developing Community Partnerships: Engaging communities to support families.
Values
Child Safety: Child safety is paramount in our program.
Constituency Engagement: We engage, support, and empower the voices of those that the program serves - to have input, influence and to support our work.
Cultural Relevance: We seek to understand and respect all cultures and to ensure that our program is culturally relevant and meaningful to those we serve.
Diversity: We view diversity as a strength that will bring richness and depth to our program; we strive to be inclusive.
Education: Education can be a great equalizer, a key to a successful future.
Employee Development and Advancement: We actively encourage and support all staff towards continuous professional growth and opportunities to maximize their contributions to the program.
Family-Centered and Strengths-Based: We focus planning and services on the family; believing that this is the most critical support for children. We believe that every family has unique strengths to build upon. Parents are the greatest influence and primary educators of their children.
Health: Children who are fearful or in pain cannot concentrate on learning. A child needs to be healthy to learn, but must also learn to be healthy. We help ensure that children have their medical and dental care taken care of and work with children and families about healthy diet and exercise. We work with families to strengthen relationships within the family and within their community.
Innovation: We are a program that is constantly seeking improvement through innovation and we view every person as being a potential ambassador of innovation.
Integrity: We are truthful and honest in all our communication and work.
Solutions-Focused: We support one another in working towards solutions to the challenges and issues that we encounter. Children thrive in success-oriented environments
Stewardship: We teach and model effective and wise use of resources.
Teamwork: We work together, building upon each other's strengths, to be successful as a team. None of us has all the tools for the program to be successful, but each of us has a unique and significant contribution to make. Teamwork is about wanting to see each other be successful. The sum of our contributions to the team will be greater than the parts.
Trust: Trust is a choice. Trust assumes the best in others.
Description
The Maricopa County Head Start Zero-Five Program is a comprehensive early childhood development program designed to provide education, health and social services to low income children, ages 0-5 and their families.
Our program emphasizes on pre-reading, language, math and other cognitive skills, while continuing to promote children's health, social and emotional competence as part of school readiness.
Services to children are provided by qualified and well-trained teachers in a classroom setting with a low student-teacher ratio. The low ratio allows us to make a significant and meaningful impact on the educational and social development of the children that we serve.
While the Maricopa County Head Start Zero-Five Program is a preschool enrichment program for children, the program is actually designed to assist the whole family. Parents are recognized as the primary educators of their children.
The Maricopa County Head Start Zero-Five Program provides parents with the opportunity to learn about all aspects of their child's development, and parents are encouraged to take an active role in their child's education. Program staff educate each family on accessing needed services and self-advocacy. Parents also participate in the governing of the program by serving on local parent committees and on the Maricopa County Head Start Zero-Five Policy Council.
