This document describes plans for the analysis of the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation (MIHOPE) follow-up data collected when participating children were in kindergarten or first grade. The overarching goal of MIHOPE is to provide information about whether families and children benefit from Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood…

Early Head Start (EHS) programs provide a comprehensive array of two-generation, family-centered services to infants, toddlers, pregnant people, and their families. These include child development services, child care, parenting education, case management, health care and referrals, and other family support services. EHS provides comprehensive…

The aim of this study was to examine the relationships between mothers' self-efficacy beliefs, their preschool children's home learning environments, and literacy skills. A sample of 112 mother-child dyads was recruited from Head Start centers in rural and urban communities. The measures included maternal self-efficacy and maternal perceptions of…

Program administrators and policy makers have placed a priority on expanding access to inclusive, center-based early care and education (ECE) for low-income children with special needs, a "doubly vulnerable" population characterized by academic and social-emotional achievement gaps at kindergarten entry. Yet, no research has documented…

Purpose: The Veterans Affairs or VA health care system is in the process of significantly expanding home health care (HOC) nationwide. We describe VA HHC use in 2003 for all VA HHC users from 2002; we examine whether VA utilization across a broad spectrum of services differed for a sample of VA HHC users and their propensity-score-matched…

Context: Availability of Medicare-certified home health care (HHC) to rural elders can prevent more expensive institutional care. To date, utilization of HHC by rural elders has not been studied in detail. Purpose: To examine urban-rural differences in Medicare HHC utilization. Methods: The 2002 100% Medicare HHC claims and denominator files were…

Purpose: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has adopted two functional assessment systems that guide care planning: one for nursing home residents (the Resident Assessment Instrument [RAI]) and a compatible one for home care clients (RAI-HC). The purpose of this article is to describe the RAI-HC (often referred to as the Minimum Data Set-Home…

Results of a survey of the Handicapped Children's Early Education Program (HCEEP) indicated that projects within the program are diverse, offer services to meet individual children's and families' needs, and significantly involve families in the projects. More than one-third of these projects are administered by publicly supported educational…

Data were gathered from 154 U.S. programs providing personal assistance services for the disabled. The survey identified approximately 850,000 people receiving community-based, publicly-funded personal maintenance, hygiene, mobility, or household assistance services, with physically disabled individuals being the most often served. The report…

This executive summary reviews results of a survey of 154 publicly-funded programs providing personal assistance services to disabled individuals. Introductory chapters identify the need for a national personal assistance program and policy, the concept of personal assistance and attendant services, the potential user population, and U.S. sources…

This report examines policy-related trends and projections in the use of various Medicaid-funded care services for persons with mental retardation and related conditions, and identifies factors influencing these trends nationally and in the various states. The examination is based on three sets of research activities: analyses of databases on…