The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework has been instrumental in illustrating the profound and long-term impact of early-life stressors in the developmental trajectories of children and families and well-being of our communities. However, despite its groundbreaking contributions, the ACEs framework predominately adopts a…

NZCER was engaged by NZQA to evaluate the NCEA me te Whanau and NCEA ma le Pasifika workshops. These workshops aim to empower whanau Maori and Pacific families by providing them with the knowledge and confidence needed to support their young people's education. The evaluation presented in this report used a variety of data collection methods,…

New America has been running a learning cohort known as the Early Care and Education (ECE) Implementation Working Group, a set of 18 city and county birth-to-five and preschool programs that began meeting in 2022 to help one another expand services quickly and equitably. This brief summarizes the findings and best practices from the working group…

Family literacy programs are potential spaces of empowerment for transnational families, yet often draw from deficit logics that fail to acknowledge the rich language and literacy practices of Latinx communities. We brought together theories of critical literacy and theories of mothering as critical work to document how transnational Latina…

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) is the term used to describe newborn experiences of withdrawal after exposure to opioids or other substances in utero (Kondili & Duryea, 2019). An urgent need exists for trained practitioners to serve children with NAS and their families (e.g., Gregory, 2014; Hancock et al., 2017; Health care Cost and…

A wealth of studies demonstrate the associations between nature contact and well-being, and gradually, nature-based solutions are becoming more widespread in mental health care and recovery. While emotion-focused therapies generally show promising results, evidence of nature-based family therapy is still scarce. In a forthcoming clinical trial at…

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal program that provides funding for states to implement and administer cash assistance to families who meet eligibility and work requirements, as well as provides funds for a wide range of other activities like education and training activities (US DHHS, 2023). TANF is funded by a block…

This paper contends that state bans on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices are indicative of a broader political agenda to restrict scholarly analyses and practitioner outreach that reveal how societal inequities, policy failures, and racialized deficit framings of marginalized students--not perceived…

This American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) Services Snapshot summarizes key data on demographics and services for children from birth to age five and pregnant women served by all American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) programs. The data in this Snapshot is a subset of the annual Program Information Report (PIR) submission to the Office of…

The problems China's rural-born migrants face in accessing urban public services, including education, are widely known. This article analyses how official discourse attributes migrant children's vulnerability to their 'problematic family background' while exhorting them to show 'gratitude' to a benevolent state. Combining documentary analysis and…

Rising child welfare costs and a desire to keep kids out of the system have encouraged the use of kinship care--of which custodial grandparents make up the majority of caregivers. Unfortunately, custodial grandparents report greater needs for social and emotional support to successfully care for their grandchildren. Yet, the resources required to…

Child welfare leaders in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, determined that they needed new approaches to keeping families together safely -- and they wanted to center their efforts around the well-being of children and young people. For situations in which foster care was the only option, they wanted it to be temporary, with fewer disruptions…

Budgets are moral documents, reflecting our priorities as a nation by deciding where to allocate resources. Congress is targeting cuts and policy changes that limit access to health care, nutrition programs, and basic financial stability for millions of children, including Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and the…

Over 400,000 American families that participate in early intervention (EI) services each year (Office of Special Education Programs, 2020). Family engagement is so crucial to the success of these services (Bruder, 2000; Trivette et al., 2010) that the use of family-centered practices (FCPs) is included in the wording of the federal special…

This year, Newark Kids Count looks a bit different. Rather than a comprehensive data report, Advocates for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ) will be releasing smaller "snapshots," showing the impact of the pandemic on children and families with data currently obtained that can provide some insight for stakeholders in Newark. This first data…