Comments on a previous article written by two mothers concerning their experience of intercountry adoption. Advocates that people in helping professions identify areas in which support for adoptive families might be required. (Author/RH)

In the late 1980s, the Denver Art Museum initiated efforts to make the museum a destination for families. From 1997 to 2001, with a generous grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts, these efforts came to fruition. From the moment they walk through the doors, families' needs are anticipated. For example, they can pick up a welcoming brochure, Free…

The theoretical, conceptual, operational, and performance foundations of an integrated framework for practicing early childhood intervention and family support are described. The framework is derived from theory, research, and practice in diverse fields of inquiry that collectively provide an organising scheme for engaging in practice that…

Recent work-family research has proposed that informal means of organizational work-family support (e.g., managerial support) are more useful than formal means of organizational work-family support (e.g., work-family benefit availability) in explaining variance in employee affective, intentional, and behavioral outcomes. However, the relative…

The current study compared patterns of service utilization reported by Early Head Start (EHS) families of children with and without disabilities by secondary analysis of data from the longitudinal investigation of the effectiveness of EHS. Findings reveal comparable positive trends for both groups of families for receipt of services corresponding…

In this study, the authors investigated the degree to which perceived social support was associated with depression, life satisfaction, and internalized binegativity in a sample of 210 bisexual young adult college students. Two types of social support (general and sexuality specific) and 2 sources of social support (family and friends) were…

A professional development activity combining group sessions with self-study assignments was used to facilitate early intervention providers' use of participation-based practices. The activity was submitted by 96 providers who completed two videotapes of sessions with families and children. Tapes were coded to identify the type of service…

This paper presents an overview of current efforts to document or evaluate initiatives for family, friend, and neighbor child care. The initiatives are grouped into two categories: those that view these caregivers through the child care lens and aim to improve the quality of care that they provide to children; and those that see these caregivers…

In-depth interviews with 500 adoptive families who received postadoption services through Virginia's Adoptive Family Preservation (AFP) program paint a richly detailed picture of the challenges adoptive families face and what they need to sustain adoption for many years after finalization. Findings document the need for support in a variety of…

Supporting and strengthening families has always been part of the early childhood professional's unique role in the community. NAEYC's Supporting Teachers, Strengthening Families initiative (www.naeyc.org/ece/supporting) is a set of activities designed to provide intentional leadership and education in the family-strengthening approach. The…

Purpose: To develop a brief family support function scale for Chinese high school students (FSFS-CHSS). Methods: Standard procedures for scale development (identification of conceptual model, literature review, item selection and modification using consumer and expert panels and item reduction techniques) were used to develop a 17-item scale.…

This paper summarizes recent evidence from a series of evaluations of family self-sufficiency programs. These studies show that policies can be successful in achieving both positive economic benefits for parents (such as increased employment) and positive educational effects on their children. It need not be the case that increasing mothers' work…

A family literacy program was examined to document the literacy experiences of 25 fathers and their five-year-old children. Using a case study methodology, this study examined the effects of a literacy intervention program that was designed to assist fathers to promote their children's acquisition of literacy. The results indicated that the…

Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is an empirically-supported behavioral parent training program designed to be administered in a clinic or laboratory-based setting. Recently, an empirical investigation revealed that in-home PCIT produced comparable results as the PCIT trials conducted in more controlled environments (this issue).…

In the last three decades, several strands of research have produced compelling evidence justifying a focus on the family with a particular emphasis on early years in order to raise literacy standards. Partners in Literacy is an evidence-based model which is built on these key research findings, these are: (1) Families and parents are critical to…