HELP ^® 0-3 Assessment for Early Head Start

^New! Watch a video overview of KinderCharts for HELP® 0-3 Assessment!

VORT Corporation, publisher of HELP®, has teamed up with KinderCharts to provide a comprehensive Early Head Start HELP 0-3 reporting system. The KinderCharts-HELP reporting system supports Federal progress reporting requirements across Head Start's five essential domains and enhances communication among parents, staff and community stakeholders for developing and monitoring school readiness goals.

HELP^® 0-3 is one of the most popular and widely used curriculum-based assessments used in early intervention programs for infants and toddlers and their families. The HELP 0-3 Strands assessment booklet links directly to Inside HELP, the Administration and Reference Manual for using HELP as an assessment, and to HELP at Home, a family focused functional curriculum for staff and parents to support each child's progress. HELP's 0-3 curriculum based assessment process uses a family-centered, relationship-based approach.

The conceptual structure of the HELP Strands, allows you to assess child strengths and needs within and between broad Head Start domains which can then be easily translated into meaningful school readiness goals for your program.

Check out our website for the following HELP resource links:

New! HELP^® Strands 0-3 Plus is now available to better support EHS programs' three-year-old children who have not yet "graduated" or are advanced beyond 3 years in some areas of development. This new version of the HELP Strands extends the HELP Strands to include more than 70 skills within 36-48 month range directly from the HELP^® 3-6 curriculum assessment

For more information regarding the HELP^® Strands and using HELP 0-3 as a curriculum based assessment process, visit the VORT website.

The KinderCharts-HELP Head Start reporting system is easy. Simply...

1. 1. Transcribe the child's current assessment results from the HELP^® Strands booklet into KinderCharts, as shown below.

1. Mark the Assessment as Complete when all of the child's results for the Assessment Period have been entered. KinderCharts will automatically quantify, aggregate and report the child's results using crediting algorithms developed with the author of HELP 0-3 Strands.
2. A comprehensive set of reports available to select from including individual child assessment reports, aggregated child progress reports and an array of management reports to meet individual program needs. All aggregated performance and progress reports come with a complete set of graphs and charts for each domain. Using Microsoft Excel's rich set of Chart Tools, these charts can be tailored to create powerful and informational presentations. As an added benefit, a comprehensive set of report filters are available to permit comparative analysis of groups of children based on demographics such as gender, age, ethnicity, number of years in the program, homelessness, child delays, parent intellectual delays, and dual language home environment.

Early Head Start HELP 0-3 reporting available through KinderCharts

General Reports

• Assessment Details: Child report that provides a hard copy of the data entered for each child for a specified Assessment Period.
• Completion Status: Management report that shows the assessment completion status for each child for a specified Assessment Period.
• Program Term Summary: Management report that shows a summary of all of the child assessments performed for each Assessment Period during the specified Program Term.
• Caseload Summary: Management report that provides each child's assessment results across the five EHS domains or across the eight core HELP development areas/domains for an entire caseload on a single page for each staff member.

Child Level Individual Reports

• Child Assessment: Five variations of the individual Child Assessment report are available.
  • EHS Domains: Individual Child report illustrates how the child is developing within each of the ten Early Head Start domains and subdomains for a specified Assessment Period. This report is designed to be shared with the family and is available in both English and Spanish. This report can be provided using:
    • Color boxes that depict the child’s overall development within the domain, or
    • Range bars that depict the range of the child’s development within the domain.
  • HELP Domains: Individual Child report illustrates how the child is developing within each of the eight core HELP developmental areas/domains. This additional developmental break-out report provides more sensitive assessment and progress reporting of the child’s strengths and needs, especially when comparing receptive and expressive language. This report is designed to be shared with the family and is available in both English and Spanish. This report can be provided using:
    • Color boxes that depict the child’s overall development within the domain, or
    • Range bars that depict the range of the child’s development within the domain.
  • Help Strands: Individual Child report illustrates how the child is developing within 39 HELP developmental areas/domains for a specified Assessment Period. This comprehensive expanded developmental break-out report provides the most sensitive assessment for reporting patterns of program children’s strengths and needs, within broader domain areas, such as Problem Solvingand Symbolic Play in the Cognitive domain. This report is currently only available in English.

• Child Progress: Two variations of the individual Child Progress report are available. These reports provide Age Range Bars showing the child’s developmental progress across multiple assessment periods.
  • EHS Domains: Individual Child report illustrates how the child is progressing within each of the ten Early Head Start domains and subdomains across multiple Assessment Periods. This report is designed to be shared with the family and is available in both English and Spanish.
  • HELP Domains: Individual Child report illustrates how the child is progressing within each of the eight core HELP developmental areas/domains. This additional developmental break-out report provides more sensitive assessment and progress reporting of the child’s strengths and needs, especially when comparing receptive and expressive language. This report is designed to be shared with the family and is available in both English and Spanish.

Program Level Aggregate Child Reports

• Child Assessment: Three variations of the aggregate Child Assessment report are available.
  • EHS Domains: Aggregated report illustrates how groups (number and percent) of children within your program are developing within each of the ten Early Head Start domains and subdomains for a specified Assessment Period. This report comes with a complete set of charts and graphs and can be run with a comprehensive set of filters that allows you to segment your children and compare results between segments.
  • HELP Domains: Aggregated report illustrates how groups (number and percent) of children within your program are developing within eight core HELP developmental areas/domains for a specified Assessment Period. This additional developmental break-out report provides more sensitive assessment and progress reporting patterns of program children’s strengths and needs, especially when comparing receptive and expressive language. This report comes with a complete set of charts and graphs and can be run with a comprehensive set of filters that allows you to segment your children and compare results between segments.
  • HELP Strands: Aggregated report illustrates how groups (number and percent) of children within your program are developing within 39 different developmental areas of the HELP Strands. HELP developmental areas/domains for a specified Assessment Period. This comprehensive expanded developmental break-out report provides the most sensitive assessment for reporting patterns of program children’s strengths and needs, within broader domain areas, such as Problem Solving and Symbolic Play in the Cognitive domain. This report comes with a complete set of charts and graphs and can be run with a comprehensive set of filters that allows you to segment your children and compare results between segments. This report is ideal for creating and monitoring School Readiness Goals.
• Child Progress: Two variations of the aggregate Child Assessment report are available.
  • EHS Domains: Aggregated report showing the number and percent of children, by type of progress achieved, for each of the five Early Head Start domains across multiple Assessment Periods. This report comes with a complete set of charts and graphs and can be run with a comprehensive set of filters that allows you to segment your children and compare results between segments.
  • HELP Domains: Aggregated report showing the number and percent of children, by type of progress achieved, for each of the eight core HELP developmental areas/domains across multiple Assessment Periods. This report comes with a complete set of charts and graphs and can be run with a comprehensive set of filters that allows you to segment your children and compare results between segments.
• EHS Outcomes: Management report that provides the aggregated assessment outcomes percentages required by the Office of Head Start for your entire agency. This report can be run with a comprehensive set of filters that allows you to segment your children and compare results between segments, as required by the Office of Head Start.

The KinderCharts Head Start management reporting system enables you to easily create insightful and informative reports and charts that demonstrate the value and performance of your agency's programs.

HELP^® is a registered trademark of VORT Corporation