Historically, Maori children in New Zealand have been consistently over-represented in negative social statistics. To describe the current status of New Zealand's education and services for at-risk Maori children and their families, this article highlights the country's overall structure of special education and services, as well as unique…

Programs that address the needs of low-income parents and children at the same time may hold promise for reducing the transmission of poverty across generations. Contemporary programs of this type address some key weaknesses that may have limited the effectiveness of earlier such approaches, including too little attention paid to the quality,…

Traditional approaches to disseminating research based programs and innovations for children and families, which rely on practitioners and policy makers to make sense of research on their own, have been found insufficient. There is growing interest in strategies that "make it happen" by actively building the capacity of service providers…

Infancy is a time of extreme opportunity, but it is also a time of extreme vulnerability, particularly for those reared in high-risk environments. Although infant exposure to any risk is important to understand, this brief focuses on the experience and impact of "trauma," defined as witnessing or experiencing an event that poses a real…

This paper deals with the implementation of integrated services providing early support for young children and their families. The integration of services is considered to have highly positive effects on the development of children and on the prevention of child neglect and maltreatment. Therefore, childcare centres have been developed into family…

Providing health care services for foster children, who frequently have significant health care needs, can be challenging. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) oversees foster care, but state child welfare agencies are responsible for ensuring that these children receive health care services, which are often financed by Medicaid. In…

This paper describes an innovative service delivery model to reduce the number of children entering the child welfare system. Point of Engagement (POE) is a collaborative family- and community-centered approach initiated in Compton, a regional office in Los Angeles County that serves south Los Angeles, a predominantly African American and…

Nonprofit family-run organizations, such as Tennessee Voices for Children (TVC), are providing leadership in advocating for and delivering services to children and families in need. Utilizing a family-driven approach and a staff partially comprised of parent-professionals, TVC's Nashville Connection and Family Connection programs have strengthened…

Describes a continuum of services to families in their homes to prevent the necessity of child placement. Presents four categories of services--general case management, the comprehensive social worker, the in-house team, and the intraagency team--to aid families who demonstrate psychological difficulty and resource deficits. (Author/JAC)

Describes a three-month study of a family reunification program for abused and neglected children that explored the process and outcomes of service delivery. The coding scheme measured both the time used in and purposes of activities of the service workers. Discusses the implications of this method for practice, planning, and research. (TM)

This report presents an evaluation of the Intensive Services Project in Lincoln and McCook, Nebraska, which was designed to demonstrate that caseworkers with smaller child protective caseloads could offer more effective home-based services. The background of the project is described focusing on staffing and service setting. Service principles and…

Draws on interviews with children, birth parents, foster carers, and social workers to explore some of the benefits and pitfalls of foster care. Interview respondents asserted that, in retrospect, coming into care was the best solution to their situation, favored maintaining ties and involvement with birth families, and children often had a…

This fourth document in the Education and Human Services Consortium's Series on Collaboration puts current efforts to create comprehensive and coordinated child and family-serving systems in a 30-year context of related endeavors. Starting from the premise that thinking about ways to structure and improve human services has been clouded by decades…

This is a design for the evaluation of emergency family care programs of the San Francisco, California Home Health Services administration. The design objectives are qiven as the promotion of the health and welfare of the family unit and the reduction of the number of out-of-home placements of children and subsequent crises. The objectives of the…

This issue of "The Link" newsletter contains the following articles: (1) "King County System Integration Initiative: Reform to Impact Dual Jurisdiction Youth and Families"; (2) "Children of Prisoners, Children of Promise" (Arlene F. Lee); and (3) "Addressing Child Trauma in Juvenile Justice and Residential Settings" (Christine Siegfried and Susan…