Discusses the following topics: (1) changes in the American family; (2) the African family; (3) slavery and post-slavery family life; (4) the role of government; (5) the contemporary Black family; (6) socioeconomic characteristics; (7) the extended family; (8) problems and prospects; (9) Black families and the future; and (10) public policy and…

Describes Title I of PL 99-457, federal legislation dealing with early intervention services for handicapped infants and their families which requires a state plan to include a definition of "developmental delay." Discusses the individual family service plan and strategy for rural educators. (SKW)

Although fundamental in helping multiproblem families avoid placement, social support is a complex construct not easy to define and difficult to carry out conceptually and practically. Four family support programs are described that illustrate certain common denominators for implementation. (Author/RWB)

Describes the programs at the Pregnancy to Parenthood Family Center, an organization that integrates psychotherapy, support, and educational services for multiproblem Marin County, California, families experiencing high levels of stress and inadequate resources during pregnancy and the first three years of parenting. Examines services,…

The Ounce of Prevention Fund is a public-private partnership which promotes the well-being of children and adolescents by working with families, communities, and policymakers. Following a letter from the Fund's chairman and president discussing the challenges faced in program evaluation and reiterating the Fund's commitment to public-private…

Kentucky's Family Resource and Youth Services Centers grew out of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. They help families and children find local solutions to nonacademic problems interfering with student learning, providing support to public schools with at least 20 percent of their students qualifying for school lunch assistance (though…

Traditional mental health approaches for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders often fail to yield successful results. However, one method, Multisystemic Therapy (MST), which represents a departure from traditional treatment strategies, is described. MST was designed to provide communities with affordable and effective remedies for…

This book describes Boysville's 5-year effort to design, implement, and evaluate an agency-based computerized management information, program evaluation, and clinical decision-making system, BOMIS (Boysville Management Information System). The goal of BOMIS is the integration of the four intervention programs, through the collection, analysis,…

Early Head Start began with 68 programs in 1995 and today, almost 650 programs serve some 55,000 low-income families with infants and toddlers. This two-generation program provides high-quality child and family development services, a focus on staff development, and a commitment to community partnerships. A rigorous national evaluation, including…

The Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) has been in operation in Oxford, England for 5 years, with the aim of raising educational attainment, especially in literacy, by an entire community of children from their birth. This book recounts how PEEP started and its operation over the 5 years, focusing on the impact of the program and the…

The development of community-based programs to support inexperienced parents through home visits by experienced mothers, who are in turned facilitated by child health and development professionals, has become an increasingly common approach in Europe and the United States. This edited volume presents proceedings from an invitational conference on…

This conference paper discusses the results of a study that investigated the validity of the Family-Centered Behavior Scale (FCBS) and its companion tool, the FCBS-Importance. On the FCBS, parents of children with special needs rate how often a professional with whom they work performs certain family-centered behaviors. On the FCBS-Importance,…

This kit is a tool for enabling communities to work together to motivate children and families to make food choices for healthy diets. Team Nutrition is the implementation tool for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's School Meals Initiative for Healthy Children. Its goal is to empower schools to serve healthy meals and motivate students to make…

Shifting to results-based accountability is a difficult stage in reforming family and children's services. Heretofore, these services have been more concerned with the number of clients seen or papers processed than in their clients' quality of life. This document should help communities find the data they need to measure qualitative outcomes. It…

Despite policymakers' increasing interest in how fathers and fathering affect the well-being of children, research into the roles of low-income fathers has not met the needs of policymakers, who could benefit from better understanding of the factors affecting fathers' continuing support of and engagement in relationships with their children. In an…