As this article emphasizes, permanency planning begins before placement through the adequate provision of assistance and services to families in order to avoid any need to remove children from their homes. Such family-focused prevention programs show promise in meeting needs of child welfare families benefiting children and states. (Author/BB)

The demand for family foster care services has increased rapidly during the past decade, as has the number of special needs children requiring foster care. This monograph presents information collected over the past 20 years concerning policies and programs which have been used to retain and recruit foster parents. The ever-increasing need for…

This report details characteristics of 50 family care programs that provide comprehensive, individualized services to families struggling with various problems, as well as services that allow parents and children to continue living together in supervised living arrangements for extended periods. Data were collected through in-depth telephone…

This report is designed to support the planning and implementation of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems (SECCS) Initiative. It addresses a set of principles that these agencies can use to advance their planning process, reach out to new partners, develop collaborative strategies, and build a…

In 2003, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) released a "Strategic Plan for Early Childhood Health." In recognition of the critical role states play in the development of early childhood initiatives and of the unique contributions that state Title V programs can make to these initiatives, the Bureau operationalized their…