THE VENTURA COUNTY HOMELESS EDUCATION PROJECT
IDENTIFICATION PILOT PROGRAM

WHAT IS McKINNEY-VENTO?
When Title VII-B of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act was amended by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, VCOE began a process of shifting its service delivery model from that of directly providing services to homeless students, to a model that promotes and supports the school districts within the county with their mandate to comply with the amended legislation.

The principal objectives of the McKinney-Vento legislation are as follows: to address the problems that homeless children and youth face in enrolling, attending, and succeeding in school; to ensure that each homeless child and youth has equal access to the same free, appropriate public education, including a public preschool education, as other children and youth; and to insure that homeless children and youth receive the services that enable them to meet the same challenging State student academic achievement standards to which all students are held.

WHAT IS OUR PILOT PROJECT?
Given the need to be sensitive to the issue of stigmatization, and the need to avoid segregation, it remains a difficult task to identify and serve homeless children and youth. Traditional approaches now used by many schools are often not geared to enhanced identification strategies. VCOE believes that it can strengthen the identification process by partnering with agencies/organizations that are more likely to serve the homeless community, and that a successful identification program facilitates the tracking of services provided to homeless children, youth, and their families.

Early identification, coupled with targeted services that are predicated on a family “inventory” will form the basis for supporting, monitoring, and tracking improvements in the lives of the homeless children and youth. We believe that this strategy will reduce and/or eliminate some of the barriers that are present as a result of their homelessness and that this, in turn, will result in improved attendance, and hopefully in improved academic performance.