Shelter Homes for Children

Supporting young children: Connecting emergency Shelter and transitional housing programs to Early Care and Education
Emergency and transitional housing programs for families serve more young children than any other age group. Across the U.S. in 2017, about half of all children and adolescents staying in shelters were under six years old. That’s about 142,620 children.

Homelessness threatens young children’s healthy development, and when families move to shelter, they often become disconnected from resources that support children’s development: preschool, high quality child care, and home visiting programs.
The People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia administers a project, Building Early Links for Learning. BELL connects early care and education programs to family emergency shelter and transitional housing providers to better respond to the needs of young children experiencing homelessness.
BELL aims to:
•       Implement recommendations within the Policy Statement on Meeting the Needs of Families with Young Children Experiencing and At Risk of Homelessness
•       Increase the developmental appropriateness of emergency shelter and transitional housing programs for young children
•       Encourage relationships between providers in the housing and homelessness services and early care and education systems
•       Increase enrollment in high quality early care and education programs for families in emergency shelter
BELL works with the Philadelphia Office of Homeless Services and 18 family emergency shelter and transitional housing providers. Each housing provider has an “educational liaison” responsible for the needs of young children, as required by the HEARTH Act of 2009. BELL helps support these liaisons to ensure families are connected to early care and education programs.
BELL also organizes training and events for staff from both the housing and early education sectors. This includes pairing staff from both sectors to complete the ACF Early Childhood Self-Assessment Tool for Family Shelters annually. They evaluate shelter spaces, policies, and practices on how well they support young children.
Building capacity

BELL recently hosted the Young Children Experiencing Homelessness Summit, bringing together 300 participants from the housing and homelessness sector, early care and education sector, and other stakeholders. Participants identified challenges: determining who will take responsibility for linking the two sectors, and determining what resources are needed to support the effort.
With support from Vanguard Strong Start for Kids and the United Way, BELL is the intermediary between early care and education and housing and homelessness service providers within Philadelphia.
The BELL model serves as an example for other communities. It takes local action to meet the early care and education needs of children experiencing homelessness.
Learn more about BELL in Zero to Three or by watching a short video.
For information on Head Start locations, visit the Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center website.