A Scoping Review of Strategies to Increase Newcomer Family Access to Early Childhood Services

TL;DR

This review explores strategies to help immigrant families access early childhood services and highlights what parents value in these programs.

Contribution

The study systematically categorizes strategies and parent preferences to improve newcomer family access to early childhood services.

Findings

Program responsiveness and outreach were the most common strategies to increase access for newcomer families.

Parents prioritize child development, perceived quality, and cultural match when choosing early childhood services.

Few studies focus on home visiting or early intervention access for newcomer families.

Abstract

Early childhood services can lay a critical foundation for refugee and immigrant children as they develop in new cultural contexts; however, these populations are underrepresented in a variety of early childhood programs such as early care and education, home visiting, and early intervention. This scoping review examines the strategies being implemented to increase newcomer families’ participation in services and parent preferences for early childhood services. A systematic search yielded 38 studies, 22 of which included strategies to increase access for newcomer families and 20 of which explored parent preferences around early childhood education. Identified strategies to promote access were categorized as program responsiveness (67%), outreach (57%), workforce responsiveness (57%), service delivery (52%), added supports (52%), social networks (43%), partnerships (43%), program policies (43%), or state and national policies (29%). Parents’ preferences for care were related to child academic and social-emotional development (80%), perceived quality (65%), type of care (65%), cultural responsivity and match (60%), and language (50%). Most studies focused on access or preferences related to early childhood programs or child care and early education broadly (89%), while fewer focused on strategies to increase access to home visiting or early intervention (11%). Additional research is needed to identify the strategies being utilized to promote access to home visiting and early intervention and to empirically test the relationship between identified strategies and improved access to these services.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11121-025-01867-y.

Figures