This manual aims to help communities develop a plan to improve services to children from birth to 3 years of age who are chronically ill or disabled, and their families. Section I provides background information needed to begin a Community Approach to an Integrated Service System (CAISS) committee in a community. It addresses the issue that…

Argues against placing the school in a lead position for delivery of services; and supports a community-based model in which diverse service providers, administrators, and institutions work collaboratively in a system of linked services. A community-based system would involve a consortium of existing agencies or a newly created entity. (SLD)

This handbook presents the essential components of a comprehensive family service system for low-income families. It shows, through the documentation and description of two low-income African American communities over 4 years of development work, the types of information that should be collected about community functioning so that informed…

Service integration attempts to provide coordinated service delivery systems for the uncoordinated mix of programs such as income support programs (food stamps, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) and employment, child care, child welfare, and training programs that exist at the local level throughout the United States by…

The System of Planned Activities in Career Education (SPACE) project was undertaken (1) to create a meaningful, cooperative effort between the area vocational technical school and the sending schools for the purpose of expanding career education to meet the needs of all children and (2) to establish a system to serve as a model for implementing…

The federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau has launched a five-year initiative that will support state efforts to build comprehensive early childhood service systems. This initiative--the State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Initiative (SECCS)--provides two year planning grants followed by three year implementation grants to the 50 state…

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…