Since 1965, when it was a six week summer program, funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, Head Start has evolved into a complex, comprehensive program serving local communities in all the States, the Virgin Islands, Outer Pacific Islands, Indian reservations and Migrants. The Bureau provides national leadership and carries out a variety of planning, policy setting, budgeting and management functions.
Regional offices work with local programs on a day to day basis.
Funding to serve the 793,809 children served in FY 97, flows from the Federal level to Regional offices and then to local communities. Unlike some of HHS's other programs, there is no state agency through which the funding flows. Regional office specialists are responsible for negotiation and monitoring of local program grants in the states within their respective regions. Responsibility for Indian Head Start programs, whose grantees are primarily federally recognized Indian tribes, rests with this regional office. The remaining Head Start programs are responsible to ten other regional offices.