The
process begins by taking the children's applications for the new
program year. Children's applications are processed to determine
eligibility and placed on the Waiting List. There is a weighting
system to rank children on the waiting list by needs. If the family
data is already in the agency database, the basic information
is retrieved and supplemented with other data that is specifically
related to the program. Medical tracking information is appended
to the basic application data as an on-going medical history of
the child.
Children
are placed into available slots from the waiting lists and transportation
routes are prepared. Once classes are in session, attendance
is posted day by day. Meals reimbursement billing is produced
automatically by the system as a by-product of attendance. The
system maintains statistics related to attendance, absences,
reasons, etc. and are available in report form or through on-line
queries.
Special needs and disabilities, both for the Head Start child
and for other family members, are coded and recorded and listings
are produced by type of disability by child, family, class,
etc. as needed to provide special services.
Health
tracking is designed to produce exception management notification
of children and tasks needing attention. The system monitors
due dates and notifies the user of tasks requiring attention.
The system tracks changes in heights, weights, and other developmental
indicators allowing us to notify health workers of children
who are outside of a normal range and may need attention. In
addition, queries can be made to provide listings of specific
tasks overdue, in total or by site. This module is a very powerful
tool in maintaining immunizations and other critical health
tasks.
Since
the PIR changes from year to year, we attempt to anticipate
requirements as much as possible so that we can produce the
required counts and statistics. The Average Daily Attendance
Report is produced automatically out of the system from attendance
postings.
When
children are repeaters, their records are carried forward into
the new program year so that only data that is required for
the new program year needs to be entered. The system produces
extensive reports on a wide range of topics with selective reporting
so that the user can supply parameters to identify the population
to be selected for a given report.
Like
all of our programmatic modules, Head Start is maintained to
reflect any program regulation changes and is upgraded on an
on-going basis.
