Each year, effective federal programs give parents the power to provide their children with affordable healthcare, nutritious food, stable housing, and early childhood education. These programs lift millions of children out of poverty, but also have long-term benefits--children in families who accessed these programs have higher educational…

In September 2000, building upon a decade of major United Nations conferences and summits, world leaders came together at United Nations Headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets--with a…

This paper discusses the characteristics of three community-based early childhood care and development support programs: the Community Mothers Program of Dublin, Ireland; the Maternal and Infant Health Outreach Workers Program of Tennessee; and the Mothers Inform Mothers Program of the Netherlands. The paper considers the general characteristics…

This paper describes important issues in the promotion of the development of children 0 to 6 years of age in Brazil, particularly in education, health, children's rights and public policy. Brazil exhibits tremendous disparities and some of the worst welfare indicators in Latin America. Much of the population faces poverty, limited educational…

This booklet discusses the origins and components of Head Start, a federal project launched in 1965 to help break the cycle of poverty by providing preschool children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs. The description of the program notes that in fiscal…

This report examines the successes and shortcomings of efforts made on behalf of Ohio's black children and their families during the last generation. The three main sections of the report examine maternal and child health, family economics, and education, discussing the situation as it existed in the recent past and as it exists today, specific…

This report describes a seminar designed to develop a better understanding of the problems and needs of working children and children living in the streets, to analyze policy and program experiences in working with such children, and to draft a set of recommendations to help improve the conditions of street and working children in the context of…

The final report of the Texas Childhood Hunger Identification Project (Texas CHIP), this document describes the most comprehensive study of childhood hunger undertaken in Texas. Through enumeration and interviewing methods, low-income families from 27 counties in Texas were analyzed in the areas of income allocation, food frequency, homelessness,…

Political changes underway at both the federal and state levels will dramatically affect public policies for children and their families in the years ahead. Drawing from over 550 budget line items in 10 state departments from 1990 to 1995, this report looks at spending on Illinois' children and families by program areas, with some specific…

This Kids Count report is the second in a series examining statewide trends in the well-being of Indiana's children. After an introduction and an explanation of the statistics, sections of the statistical report contain data on several indicators of well-being: (1) Indiana's children and their families, including population estimates, ethnicity,…

This Kids Count report is the third in a series examining statewide trends in the well-being of Indiana's children. The report combines statistics of special concern in Indiana with 10 national Kids Count well-being indicators: (1) percent low birthweight; (2) infant mortality rate; (3) child death rate; (4) birth rate to unmarried teens ages 15…