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Healthy children and families are the foundation of strong, prosperous communities. In partnership with the Land-Grant University and Cooperative Extension System, USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) supports efforts that take a holistic, life-span approach to promoting healthy physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development for individuals and families within their diverse ecologies. This is a state-by-state listing of family life and human development state extension specialists at land-grant universities. (Author abstract modified)
This fact sheet focuses on the implementation of the Early Head Start program in South Dakota. It begins by explaining the history of the Early Head Start program, the establishment of 8 Early Head Starts in South Dakota, and the goal of Early Head Start programs to prepare children to be ready for school. It is reported that in 2013-2014 a total of 868 families participated in Head Start, 18% of the parents had less than a high school diploma, and 53% were single parent families. Data on parental employment, racial characteristics of children enrolled in Early Head Start, pregnant women in…
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Journal Article This issue on fathers was conceived as a rallying cry for all professionals to examine their practices of including fathers in their services. For too long, infant mental health professionals have either ignored fathers' important influences on infants and toddlers or have given lip-service to their importance while allowing the status quo of not including fathers to continue. This article provides history and context for the impetus behind --and the hurdles to--moving from focusing on dyads to family systems, and it highlights a few forward-looking new programs and initiatives already…
Webinar
Children who read well by third grade are more likely than their peers to experience academic success and economic stability as adults. They are also more likely to have parents who read to them. This webinar looked at ways in which fatherhood programs can help fathers improve their own literacy, encourage them to read to their children, and enhance outcomes for two generations (parents and their children).
The Office of Family Assistance, through the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC), provided this technical assistance webinar for all responsible fatherhood…
This report presents the findings of a study of 1,085 U.S. parenting adults of 3 to 13 year olds that explored how families experience developmental relationships, how experiences of developmental relationships vary among different families, the extent to which developmental relationships contribute to children’s development and well-being across different types of families and circumstances, everyday interactions in families that facilitate (or interfere with) developmental relationships, strategies that hold promise for engaging families through a focus on developmental relationships, and…
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Journal Article Background: Evidence-based treatments (EBTs) are available for treating childhood behavioral health challenges. Despite EBTs’ potential to help children and families, they have primarily remained in university settings. Little empirical evidence exists regarding how specific, commonly used training and quality control models are effective in changing practice, achieving full implementation, and supporting positive client outcomes. Methods/design: This study (NIMH RO1 MH095750; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02543359), which is currently in progress, will evaluate the effectiveness of three…
U.S. women graduate from high school at higher rates than U.S. men, but the female-male educational advantage is larger, and has increased by more, among black students and students of low socioeconomic status (SES) than among white and high-SES students. The authors explore why boys fare worse than girls in low-SES households—both behaviorally and educationally—by exploiting matched birth certificates, health, disciplinary, academic, and high school graduation records for more than 1 million children born in Florida between 1992 and 2002. They account for unobserved family heterogeneity by…
Unpublished Paper
The purpose of this study was to fill a gap in our knowledge regarding father involvement in informal kinship care and its impact on the emotional and behavioral wellbeing of children in care. Although this study was neither exclusively a fatherhood nor a child welfare study, it has the potential to contribute to the knowledge base of each area. The study was guided by the principles of family systems theory, which highlight the interconnectedness of family members and the ways in which family interactions impact individual wellbeing. This study specifically explored the relationship between…
Through this issue brief, young people who are in, or have been in, foster care offer their insights and aspirations to help guide the actions of child welfare systems as they seek to provide more normal experiences for these youth. The brief begins by explaining new provisions in the Preventing Sex Trafficking and Strengthening Families Act that promote normalcy, including the requirement for States to implement a “reasonable and prudent parent” standard that allows caregivers to make more daily decisions for young people in their care; a mandate that child welfare systems engage all young…
Brief
One in every five children currently lives in poverty, but nearly twice as many experience poverty sometime during childhood. Using 40 years of data, this analysis follows children from birth to age 17, then through their 20s, to examine how childhood poverty and family and neighborhood characteristics relate to achievement in young adulthood, such as completing high school by age 20, enrolling in postsecondary education by age 25, completing a four-year college degree by age 25, and being consistently employed from ages 25 to 30. Parents’ education achievement, residential stability, and…
