Gateway Head Start / Early Head Start

Gateway Head Start / Early Head Start offers a school readiness program where children take part in learning experiences that support growth in language and literacy, cognition and general knowledge, physical development and health, social and emotional development, and approaches to learning. The program provides comprehensive services to enrolled children and their families, including health, nutrition, social, and other services determined to be necessary by family needs assessments, along with education and cognitive development services. Head Start and Early Head Start services are responsive to each child and family's ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage, and emphasize the role of parents as their child's first and most important teacher.

• Ages: 0–5 years old
• Price: Services may be free to eligible families.

Gateway Head Start / Early Head Start is part of a federal program that promotes the school readiness of children from birth to age five from low-income families by enhancing their cognitive, social, and emotional development, and it serves preschool-age children and their families. Many Head Start programs also provide Early Head Start, which serves infants, toddlers, pregnant women, and their families who have incomes below the federal poverty level, through a variety of service models that can include center-based part-day or full-day services, family child care homes, and home-based weekly visits with periodic group learning experiences for enrolled families. Over a million children are served by Head Start programs every year across every U.S. state and territory and in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

Gateway Head Start / Early Head Start operates at the Gateway Head Start Early Education Center and is led by directors Amara Azad and Jamie Spence. The program is operated by Gateway Community Action Partnership, whose mission is to provide services that improve the quality of life and promote self-sufficiency. Gateway Community Action Partnership also operates the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants & Children (WIC) in Atlantic, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, and Salem counties. Since 1965, more than 30 million low-income children and their families have received Head Start comprehensive services to increase their school readiness. Early Head Start is a federally funded community-based program for low-income families with infants and toddlers and pregnant women, and its mission is to promote healthy prenatal outcomes for pregnant women, to enhance the development of very young children, and to promote healthy family functioning.

Last updated July 19, 2026.