ACYF Administration on Children, Youth and Families	U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES Administration for Children and Families
	1. Log No. ACYF-IM-HS-00-07	2. Issuance Date: 03/01/00
	3. Originating Office: Head Start Bureau
	4. Key Word: Customer Satisfaction

INFORMATION MEMORANDUM [See Attachment at the bottom]

TO: Head Start Grantee and Delegate Agencies

SUBJECT: President's Management Council (PMC) Customer Satisfaction Results for the Department of Health and Human Services.

INFORMATION: The Administration for Children and Families is pleased to announce that the Head Start Program received the highest score of any government agency and private company in the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) released by the President's Management Council. Head Start's outstanding customer satisfaction rating even surpassed those companies such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW. The 1999 overall customer satisfaction index for the Head Start Program is 87, based on a survey of Head Start parents, 15 points above the current national score of 72 for all organizations surveyed.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a result of Vice President Gore's initiative to create a government that works better, costs less, and gets the results Americans care about. The index uses surveys and modeling methodology that relates customer satisfaction to expectation, evaluations of quality, and value. The index was produced by a partnership between the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan Business School, the American Society for Quality and Arthur Anderson. In the six years of ACSI measurement of more than 170 companies and agencies, a score as high as the one obtained by Head Start has been achieved by only a very limited number of private sector companies, virtually all manufacturers of products rather than organizations supplying a service.

Thirty federal agencies have participated in the survey to set a baseline for measuring customer satisfaction in the federal government, to establish standards for customer satisfaction among federal agencies and to identify areas in which agencies can improve customer satisfaction.

Parents' satisfaction with the program was measured by asking four questions about Head Start's benefits for the child and two questions about its benefits for the family. The child-related questions were:

1. How well has Head Start done in helping the child get along with other children?
2. How well has Head Start done in improving the child's behavior?
3. How well has Head Start done in providing health care services to the child?
4. How well has Head Start done in preparing the child for kindergarten?

The parent-related questions were:

1. Does the parent feel that the Head Start program is open to his/her ideas and participation?
2. Does the parent feel that he/she has become more involved in the community because of experience with Head Start? The indices of these two sets of benefits are weighted averages of these questions.

Two other components were major drivers of satisfaction. The first is the customer's expectation of the quality of Head Start before he/she had experience with it and the second is his/her overall perception of the quality delivered after experience with Head Start.

Further, the survey found that on a scale of 1-100 for parent trust of the program, Head Start rated an outstanding 94. The parent trust rating is derived from responses to two questions:

1. How confident are you that Head Start will do a good job of providing preschool education to children in the future?
2. How willing would you be to recommend Head Start to other parents of preschool children?
   

Head Start received nearly equally high ratings from parents on questions about their confidence in the program and the program's role as an advocate for them and their children. Ninety-three percent of parents gave Head Start confidence ratings of 8-10, and 95 percent of parents, gave the program advocacy ratings of the same level. With respect to benefits for the family, the parents in this sample felt the program is extremely open to their ideas and participation. Parents rated Head Start's handling of their complaints as slightly above average, with a score of 6.1, which is high relative to the scores obtained by other federal agencies. Finally, 89 percent of those surveyed are more satisfied with Head Start now than they were two years ago.

It has always been our goal in Head Start to provide the best and most comprehensive set of preschool services for children and to make sure that parents are involved as full partners in their children's development. This survey reaffirms the validity of this approach, and strengthens our resolve to live up to the confidence that Head Start parents have shown in our program.
The many thousand staff and volunteers who work in Head Start programs across the country can be proud of the outstanding service they provide to children and families.

The full text of the President's Management Council report on The Head Start Program is attached. Additional information on The Customer Satisfaction Survey is available on The ACF web site at http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/news/press/1999/hssatisfies.htm

/S/
Helen H. Taylor
Associate Commissioner
Head Start Bureau