This site-visit report describes Common Ground, a program located in New Hampshire that supports 52 people with developmental disabilities, including some with severe and multiple impairments, in a broad range of individualized, integrated daytime activities, including supported and competitive employment, self-employment, volunteer work, and the…

This guide is designed to help trainers working in the context of community-wide programs in all aspects of building a training program for study circle facilitators. Part 1 presents guidelines and principles for good training, basic training agenda for a 6-hour program, and annotated training agenda with notes about the process in each section…

This collection of papers presented at a 1996 conference on children's mental health research focuses on studies of family participation. Individual papers have the following titles and authors: (1) "Measuring Satisfaction with Community-Based Services for Children with Severe Emotional Disturbances: A Comparison of Questionnaires for Children and…

This summary on transition planning provides ideas and information on how students, families, school personnel, service providers, and others can work together to help students with a disability make a smooth transition after leaving high school. It focuses on creative transition planning and services that use all the resources that exist in…

Guidelines and ideas for creating successful school/community projects are provided in this handbook. Organized like a cookbook, the book contains 43 chapters by individual contributors who take a community-based approach to education, in which the schools are the pivotal institutions of a community. The first section outlines the roles, or…

This essay discusses the roots, current shapes, and social and operational implications of mentoring young people in poverty. After an introductory first section on mentoring and the new voluntarism, Section II, "Recurring Fervor," notes recent increased interest in mentoring and traces the early manifestations of mentoring to 19th…

A project identified students gifted and talented in the arts to participate in a Roanoke (Virginia) County Schools program to develop welding, carpentry, masonry, and metal working skills essential in the production of heroic scale three-dimensional art forms. A steering committee identified nine gifted students from four area high schools. The…

This manual offers a means for individuals to engage members of their community or organization in a dialogue on racism and race relations. In particular, it provides basic building blocks for a discussion program on racism and race relations and some suggestions for designing a program pertinent to particular needs of groups or organizations. The…

A survey was conducted of the number and needs of adults with mental retardation or other developmental disabilities (MR/DD) currently waiting for community services. Survey data were obtained for 46 states and the District of Columbia. Respondents included directors of state mental retardation/developmental disabilities programs, state…

Since most black communities in South Africa have been made powerless because of race and poverty, there is a pressing need to empower the individuals of such communities to take charge of their own destinies, especially in the area of early childhood education and care (educare). Current educare projects are often completely or partially…

Family day care is the largest source of nonparental care for young children and often provides the care many families require. In 1991-93, the National Center for Children in Poverty studied 10 local programs that support family day care providers in low-income neighborhoods to increase understanding about family day care and to learn from the…

The report summarizes 27 research studies which examined the attitudes and perspectives of parents of currently or formerly institutionalized people with mental retardation concerning movement from institutional to community placements. Several trends were evident. Parents whose offspring were living in institutions at the time of the survey were…

This Tennessee State policy is designed to provide positive learning outcomes for young children and promote parent involvement and the coordination of services for children and families. Introductory material underscores the importance of early learning, summarizes results of preschool intervention programs such as Head Start, and identifies…

This report focuses on the formulation and implementation of family support and education policies in four states, all of which have established programs that provide the core services of parenting education, early childhood development activities, parent support groups, and information about other community agencies. The initiatives are…

This paper draws on the experience of various states in its discussion of questions, issues, and decisions that policymakers face as they plan their states' family support initiatives. The discussion is organized into three parts that correspond roughly with the stages of policy formation, program development, and program implementation and…