To promote children's healthy development and give them opportunities to flourish, families need a wide range of support services. These services are often disconnected from each other. Early care and education (ECE) has a particularly fragmented system (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018). Systems with myriad processes…

The Survey of Head Start Grantees on Training and Technical Assistance (T/TA) was conducted in program year 2019-2020 with a nationally representative sample of Head Start program directors and Head Start managers/coordinators to understand how Head Start grantees use T/TA of all types and from all sources. Head Start program directors completed…

In humanitarian settings, mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSS) are often delivered in group-based formats. Group interventions enable providers to reach more individuals when resources and technical expertise are limited. Group-based programs also foster social support, empathy, and collective problem-solving among the…

Including parents of children with developmental delays in early intervention programs has been widely endorsed as best practice across the multiple disciplines that work in that context. Parents have echoed that sentiment, commenting on the benefits of being able to apply skills in broader family and community contexts. Despite a 20-plus year…

This document discusses a range of policy and practice options that states can undertake to increase college student access to public benefits. The Center for Law and Social Policy, Inc. (CLASP) has leveraged its hands-on policy and cross-issue technical assistance expertise to identify these options. Many states have already implemented one or…

Background: Our aim in this paper is to build upon the experience of family adaptation and to describe one unique stressor experienced by adoptive parents of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) that may hinder successful family adaptation. Method: Fifty-one adoptive parents of children with FASD from 36 families in Ontario,…

A family history of neural tube defects (NTDs) can increase the risk of a pregnancy affected by an NTD. Periconceptional folic acid use decreases this risk. Purpose: Our objective was to determine whether second-degree relatives of NTD-affected children showed differences in folic acid use compared with the general population and to provide them…

Scientific discoveries indicated the importance of brain growth during the first 5 years of child life. To support early childhood development, California voter passed Proposition 10 in 1998 to collect a 50 cent per pack tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products. Kern County Children and Families Commission (First 5 Kern) receives funding from…

Strong mental and behavioral health supports on campus can improve the academic performance of students and increase their resilience and ability to handle stress, with reduced suicide rates, substance abuse, and eating disorders, but this study reveals that students with mental health disabilities continue to face barriers to accessing counseling…

In 2007, New York City launched the first test of a conditional cash transfer program in the United States. Called Family Rewards, the program sought to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty by offering cash assistance to poor families to reduce immediate hardship, but conditioned this assistance on families' efforts to improve their…

This guide aims to help states look beyond the major sources of child care and early education funding and consider alternative federal financing sources to bring comprehensive services into early childhood settings. Why? Because the sources of child care funding historically available to states have limited supply and allowable uses, and…

For more than a decade, Florida's Palm Beach County has been building an infrastructure of prevention and early intervention services to promote and support the healthy development and school readiness of children from birth to age 8. The county began this effort with a set of programs focused on serving families in four targeted geographic areas…

Designed to help social service agencies achieve a comprehensive system of care for chemically dependent pregnant and postpartum women and their drug-exposed children, the model described in this report was developed by a panel of 12 experts in the field of perinatal addiction and drug exposure in infants. The report begins with an overview of…

The Comprehensive Services Program of Palm Beach County, Florida, was an ambitious and innovative effort to improve the school readiness of low-income children in Palm Beach County by identifying needs early and providing early intervention services to support physical, cognitive, and emotional health and development. Services were delivered to…

In 1992 CityMatCH, a national organization of urban maternal and child health programs and leaders, initiated a survey of programs to serve as an information resource for urban public health practitioners. This report updates previous data, presents baseline information on maternal and child health (MCH) programs in urban health departments…