Free To Grow—a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF)—supported efforts by Head Start agencies and their community partners to strengthen the families and neighborhood environments of high-risk preschool children living in low-income communities. The goal was to reduce the children's vulnerability to substance abuse and related problems in later life.

The program ran from 1992 to 2005 and included a pilot phase with five geographically diverse Head Start sites and a demonstration and evaluation phase involving 15 Head Start agencies. Researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine conducted an independent evaluation, tracking changes in family and community risk and protective factors at 14 demonstration sites and 14 matched communities selected for comparison.

The Head Start agencies partnered with local police departments, school systems and other organizations to implement an integrated mix of family and neighborhood strategies to address substance abuse, child abuse and other risky behaviors.

Key Results
The following were among the results of Free To Grow reported to RWJF by the national program office in December 2005 at the conclusion of the demonstration phase:

• Free To Grow enhanced the organizational capacity of participating Head Start agencies to identify and assist vulnerable families, especially those with substance abuse and mental health problems.
• Free To Grow demonstrated that Head Start agencies are capable of building diverse partnerships to strengthen families and communities. The agencies partnered with police, schools, other local government agencies and various private organizations, including substance abuse treatment providers.
• The participating Head Start agencies expanded the reach of their interventions to include other vulnerable families residing in the same neighborhoods whose children were not enrolled in the Head Start educational program. More than 50 percent of the agencies' community encounters were with non-Head Start families, according to program records.
• Free To Grow developed models of family- and community-focused prevention intervention that could be disseminated more broadly to other Head Start agencies within Head Start and the larger early childhood community.
• Free To Grow increased the opportunity for parents, other primary caregivers and residents of the target areas to develop leadership skills and participate in community activities and advocacy around local policy initiatives.
• Free To Grow enabled Head Start parents and other primary caregivers and residents to strengthen their relationships with local police.

Key Findings
The following were among findings that the Wake Forest University evaluators reported in 2008 in a written summary submitted to RWJF and in a report, Evaluation of Free To Grow: Head Start Partnerships to Promote Substance-Free Communities. (The national program office staff disagreed with some findings, contending the evaluation failed to fully identify the program's impact on families and communities.):

• As a group, the Free To Grow sites were generally successful in building staff and organizational capacity to design and implement best or promising programs, policies and practices to address substance abuse, child abuse and neglect, and other risk behaviors.
• Free To Grow sites were more likely than comparison sites to implement family- and community-strengthening strategies consistent with the Free To Grow model and were more likely than comparison sites to offer various services to non-Head Start families.
• There was substantial variation in the degree to which the different Free To Grow sites implemented the recommended components of the Free To Grow model. By the final year, only three of the 14 demonstration sites were judged by expert raters as having both a "strong" family-strengthening approach and a "strong" community-strengthening approach.
• Free To Grow Head Start agencies were more likely to have built partnerships with local law enforcement agencies and public schools than were the comparison Head Start agencies.
• Community partners at Free To Grow sites were significantly more likely to work on behalf of Head Start than were partners at comparison sites-for example, speaking in public on behalf of the Head Start program and serving as a Head Start representative to other groups.
• There was no consistent evidence of change in family functioning or neighborhood conditions when the 14 Free To Grow sites were compared to the 14 matched sites at the three-year follow-up.
• Analyses that controlled for the risk status of parents/caregivers in the Free To Grow and comparison communities also produced little evidence of impact at the three-year follow-up.
• There was some evidence that the three Free To Grow sites that implemented the program model most fully had a positive impact on caregivers of young children not enrolled in Head Start. For example, community participants in Free To Grow high-implementing sites reported higher levels of Neighborhood Organization and Family Norms Against Substance Use in 2006 than in 2003 compared to the low-implementing and comparison sites.

Conclusion
In the final 2009 report, after extensive analyses, the evaluation team concluded: "The results provide limited support for the concept that family and neighborhood conditions that are likely to affect child development and well-being can be attained through organized change efforts implemented by local Head Start programs."

No longer-term follow-up assessment was planned or conducted to examine the extent to which Free To Grow models were sustained after RWJF funding ended.

Program Management
The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University served as the national program office for Free To Grow. Judith E. Jones, M.Sc. directed the program; Lori Devine, M.A. was the deputy director.

Funding
The RWJF Board of Trustees authorized up to $13.4 million to fund Free To Grow—$5.4 million in 1992 for the pilot phase and an additional $8 million in 2000 for the demonstration and evaluation phase. The demonstration phase was structured as a dollar-for-dollar matching grants program, which resulted in the sites raising $4 million in additional funding from local foundations, public agencies and other entities over four years.

In addition, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation provided $2.9 million in implementation funding beginning in 2000 for the Free To Grow sites to expand their family services and to support training and technical assistance to the sites with the goal of reducing risks for child maltreatment.

The U.S. Department of Justice (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services) provided $1.4 million for program evaluation beginning in 1999.