Barriers and Opportunities: Helping Smaller Immigrant Communities Access the Illinois Preschool for All Program

1 -- -—-About half of metro Chicago’s immigrants are from smaller immigrant communities. This research finds that families from these communities face barriers to accessing the Illinois Preschool for All (PFA) initiative, but also highlights promising strategies to address these barriers by partnering with community-based organizations that provide services to immigrant families. The Chicago area immigrant community is diverse, with roughly half coming from Mexico and Central and South America, and half coming from other countries and regions. This research adds to our understanding of the broader immigrant experience by focusing on PFA access barriers faced by some of these smaller immigrant communities. Understanding and addressing these challenges is essential for Illinois to successfully prepare the all of the region’s youngest residents for school and future success. 2 -1 his brief summarizes findings from three studies conducted by Urban Institute. Two studies supported by ---involved focus groups with Pakistani, Nigerian, Vietnamese, Polish, and Haitian families, and interviews with PFA providers and intermediary community-based organizations (CBOs) serving immigrant families. [For more information, see the full reports listed at the end of this brief.] - --  Within and across these five groups, there was wide variation across every dimension–including race/ethnicity, language, length of time in the country, family composition, population size, parental work status, and other key characteristics;  Parents varied widely in their knowledge about PFA or early childhood programs, though many parents were not familiar with the program. PFA programs reported little outreach to smaller immigrant groups;  Parents valued early care and education to varying degrees—some strongly supporting it and others less familiar with it; 1 Unpublished data from the 2007-2009 American Community Survey, analyzed by Urban Institute, show that 51 percent of the immigrants in Chicago Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) were from countries other than Latin America, including 23 percent from Europe (the largest group from Poland at 9 percent), 24 percent from Asia (largest representation from India at 7 percent and the Philippines at 5 percent), 3 percent from Africa, and 1 percent from Canada. 3  Parent’s experiences and challenges differed depending on whether their children were enrolled in school-based settings or in community-based settings. - Lower-incidence families and PFA providers highlighted several barriers to enrolling children from lower-incidence groups. While the families appeared to face barriers similar to those experienced by other (higher-incidence) immigrant and low-income families, their challenges seemed exacerbated by their smaller population size and the smaller numbers of people speaking their language. It is likely that their smaller numbers mean their communities do not create sufficient demand for certain types of services, and that there are fewer adults available to work in programs to meet the needs for language and cultural diversity. Perhaps, in some cases, it is less likely that there are cultural intermediary groups to help them. Parents and providers reported language and logistical challenges around enrollment:  Challenges understanding forms, not being able to communicate, and needing help with the process.  Additional challenges (related to language, logistics, and eligibility) applying for subsidized child care assistance when working parents needed the assistance to attend PFA in community-based child care settings.  Challenges of having few or no staff speaking their language, and the speculation that this could deter some families from enrolling.  Schools having a limited supply of PFA slots.  Confusion among providers and families about whether Social Security Numbers were needed for enrollment. - The above findings led the Urban Institute team to conduct a follow-up study on potential strategies to support PFA outreach to lower-incidence communities. This study focused on intermediary community-based organizations (CBOs) working with smaller immigrant communities. This focus is because of the important role that intermediary organizations can play, because some parents in the focus groups reported the value of intermediary CBOs in helping them deal with the language, culture, and logistical barriers to enrollment, and because CBOs have experience working to help their families’ access services. 4 Accordingly, Urban Institute conducted focus groups and interviews with a number of CBOs serving immigrant and refugee populations in the Chicago area, and conducted interviews with individuals and organizations knowledgeable about outreach to immigrant parents around early care and e