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Starting Strong: How Head Start Helps Trauma-Impacted Children Thrive
Having worked closely with trauma-impacted children in both child care and child welfare settings, I’ve seen firsthand the transformative power of safe, nurturing environments in fostering healing and resilience. In my experiences caring for children residing in a domestic violence shelter and supporting child welfare cases at a child advocacy center, I saw how trauma can profoundly affect a child’s development, and the pivotal difference supportive care relationships can make. High-quality early childhood programs like Head Start offer a critical lifeline, providing stability, consistency, and care essential for young minds who have experienced trauma. Yet, despite their proven benefits, Head Start programs often face scrutiny, underfunding, or threats to their existence. Here’s why Head Start is so essential — and why it deserves more investment, not less.
The stakes are high. When children are repeatedly exposed to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) like abuse, neglect, or family instability, healthy brain development can be disrupted. ACEs trigger the brain’s stress response system, and continual activation of the stress response can lead to “toxic stress,” which creates significant barriers to learning, emotional and behavioral difficulties, and worsened long-term health outcomes.
These adverse experiences are, unfortunately, not rare. Any child, regardless of their socio-economic status, can be affected by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). In the general population, one in 10 children have experienced three or more ACEs, placing them at high risk for developing toxic stress. For children enrolled in Head Start programs, however, this risk is four times higher, with four in 10 children experiencing three or more ACEs. This is because Head Start was specifically created to serve our most vulnerable children, many of whom face the compound risks of poverty and trauma.
But in the right setting, these risks can be mitigated. Resilience — the ability to “bounce back” from hardships — is vital for children who face high ACE exposure. Head Start provides many of the protective factors linked to promoting child resilience: safe and predictable environments, long-lasting relationships with caring adults, and resources for their families that help reduce stress at home.
Head Start programs give children stability and routine, allowing them to rebuild their sense of security. Head Start’s focus on social-emotional health and trauma-informed strategies helps children form trusting relationships and regulate emotions — both essential for trauma recovery. Head Start also reduces stress on children by actively supporting families, offering parental support, connecting them to community resources, and providing mental health services. Further, early educators form long-lasting, substantial relationships with both children and families. These relationships act as a powerful buffer against ACEs.
In the child development center where I worked, we cared for children from infancy through preschool age, sharing nearly every day with them and witnessing some of their most memorable firsts. We knew their favorite toys, their comfort routines, the foods that made them happiest. We celebrated milestones like first words and first steps, but we also provided the familiar faces and steady presence both they and their families could depend on.
Head Start’s positive effect on buffering the impact of ACEs is profound. ACE exposure is correlated with lower school readiness, increased behavior problems, and worsened educational outcomes, yet Head Start children show fewer behavior problems and better classroom focus once they reach Kindergarten. Head Start enrollment is significantly associated with children’s positive developmental outcomes. And children who remain in the program longer show even stronger developmental gains.
Reflecting on my time working in child care, I know that without Head Start, many children I cared for would have faced far greater challenges. But despite Head Start’s well-documented benefits, only about 30% of eligible children are currently served. This means that countless trauma-impacted children are left without access to these critical resources and opportunities for healing.
Policymakers need to recognize the unique role of Head Start in addressing trauma and building resilience in our most vulnerable children. Instead, it is under attack. Project 2025’s proposal to eliminate Head Start threatens to dismantle this critical lifeline, ignoring its documented ability to mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences. Investing in Head Start is not just an investment in individual children; it’s an investment in a healthier, more resilient society.
