Planning and reviewing are the starting and ending points of the ongoing cycle of delivering high-quality Head Start services. This module provides an overview of the process and the many benefits programs derive from it.

The planning process focuses attention on the program's most critical challenges and opportunities. Leaders can gain insight into the future direction of their agency's programs and services and the way they affect the community at large. Planning provides an opportunity for program leaders to think about the future and commit to goals and activities that will set or keep the program on course over the next few years.

A good planning system is dynamic and includes all the significant players: staff and parents, Head Start managers, and other grantee and delegate staff as well as the Policy Council/Policy Committee and the governing body. Programs operating with delegate agencies may need to add a layer to their planning process that integrates the delegate's planning activities into the grantee's planning cycle. It is the grantee's responsibility to advise its delegates about the overall planning process and the way delegates' activities will be integrated.

The Planning Team

Each agency needs to establish its planning team or group. The team may be a special work group that collaborates to develop and implement a systematic process. This process includes establishing the planning calendar and procedures, assessing community and programmatic needs, and formulating long- and short-range goals. When these goals have been established, the planning team may step aside and allow those involved in developing, implementing, and monitoring the goals, objectives, and program and operational plans to take over.

Who should participate on the planning team? The planning team should, if possible, represent all stakeholders in the Head Start program. This includes representatives from staff, parents, the governing body, and the Policy Council/Policy Committee. Finding ways to coordinate planning activities with other community agencies, such as conducting a joint CA, is an important aspect of a community's service delivery system.

Members need to be skilled in collecting and analyzing data and know how to present their findings in written, spoken, and visual formats. Other important skills and knowledge include creative thinking, good judgment, experience, and future orientation. Perhaps the most fundamental characteristic that all planning team members need to share is a commitment to the planning process, which can take a lot of time and patience.

Planning team members must communicate the results of the planning process to those who will implement them. It is important that everyone involved in the program understands how and why the planning team came up with the proposed recommendations. Team members with good interpersonal skills can encourage links between the planning team and other staff, parents, and interested community partners.

The Planning and Reviewing Process

The steps in the planning and reviewing process are Plan to Plan, Take Stock, Propose Directions, Develop and Adopt Plans, and Review. Keep in mind that while a program begins a new planning process, it continues to implement the current plan. Therefore, planning and implementing happen simultaneously.

Because planning is a dynamic and multifaceted activity, many of the steps overlap and are continuous or repeated throughout the program year, calendar year, or the timeframe of the long-range plan. For instance, when a program or agency has taken stock and proposed direction, and then finds out through its internal ongoing monitoring process that the plans it adopted are not working well, it may be necessary to propose a new direction and/or adopt different approaches to issues than the ones originally chosen. Making the adjustments and fine-tuning the results of ongoing monitoring and self-assessment data are essential continuous improvement activities.

Plan to Plan

Getting organized is the basic task of the first step, Plan to Plan. Important elements include selecting and orienting the planning team and getting the necessary commitment to proceed from the Policy Council/Policy Committee and governing body. This process also involves determining the data needed for the CA and the tasks involved in collecting the data. In planning for the CA, team members need to know how to gather information from sources such as the common Head Start data sources, U.S. Census Bureau; local and state planning departments; local and state education departments; welfare departments; public health, housing, and employment offices; organizations that provide community services for children with disabilities; and child care resources. Team members also need to understand how to collect and interpret both hard data from quantitative reports and soft or qualitative data such as opinions, surveys, focus group discussions, and interviews with community institutions, families receiving or needing services, and staff and agencies that work with Head Start-eligible families.

Take Stock

The second step in the Head Start program planning process is to Take Stock. In this step the planning team analyzes the environment and reviews past, present, and future situations. Programs are required to assess the strengths, needs, and resources of their communities at least once every 3 years and update this information in the 2 intervening years. Federal regulations (45 CFR Part 1305.3) specify the types of information that need to be collected related to the grantees' service area. In general, programs need to:

• Collect demographic data about the eligible population in the service area.
• Look for any special health, education, social service, or nutritional needs.
• Specify the geographic distribution of eligible families in the service area.
• Conduct a study of resources in the community that could—or currently do—address some needs of Head Start and low-income families.
• Identify other child development and child care programs serving Head Start-eligible children and the approximate number served by each program.

In addition to the CA data, programs also analyze their own operations by reviewing and comparing information from the Program Information Report (PIR), ongoing monitoring and self-assessment data, and federal monitoring reports. The most critical part of this phase is analyzing the external data along with that produced by the agency's internal sources to determine the trends and issues that exist in the community (service area).

Programs consider how this information is related to existing plans. An agency that fails to interpret its community information correctly may commit to directions (goals, objectives, and plans) that do not respond to the most serious needs of families. At this stage grantees with delegates need to make initial decisions about delegate agencies' allocations, based on preliminary information about eligible children within the boundaries of the grantees' and each delegate's service area.

Propose Directions

In the third step, Propose Directions, programs formulate goals and program and fiscal objectives that address the CA findings. The program's direction must be consistent with the mission of both Head Start and the grantee. In addition, proposed goals and objectives should reflect findings from the program's annual self-assessment and other internal data.

Develop and Adopt Plans

The next step, Develop and Adopt Plans, commits the agency to agreed-on directions that are selected from those proposed. Program area and operational plans are developed and adopted.

By adopting goals and objectives, the agency's policymakers identify key issues that influence other processes and activities: recruitment, selection and enrollment, site placement, expansion priorities, collaborative relationships and activities, and development/revision of program area plans. During this phase, the initial planning team may need to involve more staff in developing the program area and other operational plans that they will implement.

When developing program area plans, staff with specific content area expertise may be helpful in identifying the philosophical directions for these plans, such as the use of specific curricula, the adoption of strategies for working with families, case management, group work, and so on.

Review

The last step is Review. In this Guide, the term review or reviewing includes two processes, ongoing monitoring and self-assessment. Ongoing monitoring is a more frequent review of operations to ensure that an agency is moving along the path toward accomplishing established targets such as full enrollment, completion of health exams, completion of family partnership agreements, and a balanced expenditure of funds.

Self-assessment includes two phases. The first is the annual procedure that checks the results of implementing objectives and strategies and program area plan(s). This phase determines whether an agency's activities are producing the desired outcomes and moving toward achieving goals.

The second phase is the annual self-assessment conducted in concert with planning for the next 3-year cycle. This phase continues to focus on determining whether desired outcomes have been achieved and full implementation of the agency's plans has occurred. However, the second phase of the self-assessment also involves the agency's determining the extent to which program goals are met and the impact that services have had on the issues and concerns selected for action during the CA.