Program to help low-income families gets additional funding

A Santa Cruz County non-profit is getting some financial help from a federal grant to boost it’s children’s programs for low-income families. Encompass Community Services has been working with low-income families for 50 years. The non-profit says this new grant money will help even more people out.

Encompass’ Head Start Program, which supports school readiness and promotes healthy families, has been awarded more than $3 million in federal grant dollars to expand services to full day, full year programs. Currently, the program only has two sessions per day, Tuesday through Thursday, and doesn’t operate year-round. Once the grant money kicks in and the funds are put into the proper channels, the program will run Monday through Friday for some programs, all day and all year long.

“We’re really excited, we really want to serve families and children full day and full year, it makes better outcomes for the children, school readiness outcomes, and it’s better for families,” said Jerri Winner, the Child Development Director of Head Start.

“They’re gonna be able to expand to try and reach more families than they were able to previously, so I think we’re gonna be able to do a lot with this grant,” said Tony Tapiz, the parent of a child involved in Head Start.

Nearly 1.7 million dollars of the grant money will go towards fixing existing head start centers, opening three new ones, and hiring more staff, while around 1.5 million will be put towards on-going funding.

The Head-Start Program not only helps children with literacy, activities, and other educational tools, but it helps their families. They say when they expand from two sessions per day to one long one, it will allow parents time to work part-time jobs or further their own education.