This article explores the current status in the United States of support to families who care for children with disabilities at home. It summarizes essential program features, program effects, and outstanding issues (such as, ensuring family involvement in policy formation, sufficient funding, and system collaboration). (DB)

The past few decades have brought dramatic changes in family structure. Regardless of the configuration, a family should have certain basic characteristics in order for children to lead healthy, happy, and successful lives. Those characteristics include family involvement in school, community, and children's extracurricular activities, open…

Individual participation in athletics was examined as an achievement-oriented activity in which perceived parental support or pressure influence adolescents' perceptions of themselves and their performance. Results with 97 male and 57 female tennis players provide evidence of an association between perceptions of parental involvement and activity…

Leaders from 28 organizations met to examine school-family-community collaboration and to look at successful school models. Groups developed lists of key roles for families, businesses, organizations, and government. They created a mission statement that called family involvement essential in every aspect of child development and education. (SM)

Introduces Elizabeth Johnson, an eleventh grade history teacher who won the 1992 National PTA's Pheobe Apperson Hearst Outstanding Educator award. Johnson has initiated several programs to increase parent involvement, and she maintains a close relationship with parents to help her meet the needs of diverse student populations. (SM)

This paper describes the cultural influences on the process of interviewing families to develop intervention goals for young children with disabilities. It describes an approach to ethnographic interviewing that involves developing rapport, using descriptive questions, and carefully wording questions, to assist families in discovering answers to…

This paper examines factors associated with meaningful family involvement in program planning for community residential services for individuals with mental retardation. It is argued that personnel in placement settings are often ambivalent about more family involvement. Guidelines for involving families at every stage both before and after…

Outlines a method for teaching kindergarten students to model and write journal entries. Discusses also responding to the entries, assessment, the writing environment, and parent involvement. (PRA)

This article describes a model project for promoting interagency collaboration at state and local levels to facilitate transitions of young special needs children and their families from infant/toddler programs to preschool programs. Project Sequenced Transition to Education in the Public Schools (STEPS) has four major components: interagency…

Surveyed 69 mothers about having grandparents in family. Found that single mothers emphasized grandparents' support in childrearing, married mothers stressed grandparents' value in providing family heritage and stability, and both agreed that grandparents' interference in childrearing could pose threats to family harmony. Proposes grandparents…

Interviews with 62 families who had placed their children with mental retardation in residential placement reflected high involvement with their children, with 81% of families visiting monthly. There was marginal evidence for a lessening of involvement over time. Family involvement was most strongly related with facility characteristics,…

The effects of promoting families to be involved in the homework of their middle-grades children, and the effect of involvement on student achievement in mathematics were studied with families of 74 white sixth graders. Prompted families were significantly more involved in homework. Level of family involvement was not significantly related to…

An analysis of transcripts from focus groups of service providers and parents of children diagnosed with autism found convergence in the areas of collaboration, family support, financial issues, equity, early identification, advocacy, training, and inclusion. Divergent themes included access, home programming, the law, best practice, and…

A survey of 25 families of children (ages 3-9) with autism and pervasive developmental disabilities found that families interacted with a host of different agencies and professionals to receive services. Many families reported difficulty accessing needed services and minimal involvement in planning or implementing these interventions. (CR)

Proposes developing systems that allow parents to contribute items to their preschool child's portfolio. Suggests transition portfolios, parent information sheets, weekly newsletters, requested parent observations, sharing table, and take home packets as activities that parents can choose from during the school year. Stresses need for a variety of…