The Office of Head Start (OHS) has the statutory requirement to conduct oversight reviews of all Head Start and Early Head Start programs around the country. These monitoring reviews must be conducted every 3 years for existing programs and after the first year for new programs. To enhance the effectiveness of these monitoring reviews, OHS has remodeled the review program to implement greater consistency, objectivity, and universal transparency throughout the pre-planning and on-site review efforts.

For Grantees, this means a single, streamlined, and integrated review protocol containing the full range of compliance questions covering all the content areas and systems necessary for a comprehensive review. The OHS requires review teams to use a standardized protocol tool. This tool links each compliance question directly to a regulation that guides Reviewers in conducting review activities related to the performance requirement. The OHS Monitoring Protocol was intended to ensure that review teams applied a common set of performance indicators across regions as part of the national oversight. The goal of OHS in developing the 2007 Protocol is to perfect the monitoring review process by building a single protocol, encouraging ongoing interaction with the grantee, establishing a Team Leadership role, and developing a professional pool of skilled Reviewers.

Serving as consultant to the OHS, Danya International, Inc., is responsible for the logistics surrounding the on-site review. Following notification in writing 30 days prior to the scheduled date of the on-site review, Danya requests a series of documents from the Grantee for the monitoring team to review prior to and during the on-site assessment. Grantees are also contacted by the Team Leader (TL), who is assigned from another regional office to supervise the on-site review. The TL will seek to learn about the Grantee’s region as well as confirm scheduled activities and request any additional documentation.