Objectives: To assess the impact of a voluntary, paraprofessional home visiting program on promoting child health and development and maternal parenting knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Methods: This collaborative, experimental study of 6 Healthy Families Alaska (HFAK) programs enrolled 325 families from 1/00 to 7/01, randomly assigned them to…

Measures of quality are now in widespread use across states as part of quality improvement initiatives. For example, many states are currently using global measures of quality that were first developed for research and practice purposes (such as the Environmental Rating Scales) in their Quality Rating Systems (QRSs). Although global quality…

This document presents an evaluation of the New York State Preventive Services Demonstration Project, which provides services to families in distress to shorten or prevent the placement of children in foster care. A total of 549 cases, involving 992 children, were involved in the 1-year study. The experimental group of 373 cases received services…

The Child Care Initiative Project, a public-private partnership designed to build the supply of child care throughout California, has achieved remarkable success in recruiting and training providers and increasing the number of child-care spaces in family day-care settings. Community-based organization and strong evaluation instruments have been…

As a means to integrate children with learning disabilities into the regular class structure of the school, a plan has been developed which would provide for specialized services in a flexible organizational pattern. A revised system of state reimbursement to the local school systems is designed to maintain children with mild handicaps in the…