Research on home visiting shows that Early Head Start (EHS) home-based programs benefit from additional training and resources that streamline philosophy and content. In this essential guide, Walsh and Mortensen propose that alignment with Family Life Education’s (FLE) strengths-based methodology results in greater consistency through a model of prevention, education, and collaboration with families. This text is the first to outline linkages between FLE and EHS home visiting. It explores a qualitative study of FLE integrated in a current EHS home-based program and application of FLE methodology to home visiting topics. This approach will influence professional practice and provide a foundation for developing evidence-based home visiting practices. Online content accompanies the text, with videos demonstrating the FLE approach in action and discussion questions to encourage engagement with and understanding of the core material. Transforming Early Head Start Home Visiting: A Family Life Education Approach is essential reading for upper-level undergraduate and masters students in family studies and early childhood education, as well as practitioners working with children and families.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

Now in its second edition, Introduction to Human Development and Family Science was the first text to introduce human development and family studies (HDFS) as inextricably linked areas of study. Pioneers of research paradigms have acknowledged that the family is one setting in which human development occurs, and much work is inherently multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. This book helps to fortify an understanding of HDFS and subareas within it. Key features include: Chapters aligned with Certified Family Life Educator (CFLE) Guidelines. An applied focus, with vignettes exploring diverse family structures and human experience, a brand-new appendix with helpful tips to encourage the effective utilization of research. Discussion of the wide variety of career paths for HDFS students. Rich pedagogical features, including Challenge: Integration sections, bringing together content from all chapters; Journal Questions, encouraging reflection on content as well as personal experience; and Suggested Resources, listing relevant websites, books, articles, and video links for further study. Incredibly user-friendly, this is essential reading for students new to Human Development and Family Science. A fully developed Instructor and Student Website includes flashcards, self-testing quizzes, and discussion questions for students, as well as activities, lecture slides, test banks, and video recommendations for instructors.

Since its beginning in 1965 as a part of the War on Poverty, Head Start's goal has been to boost the school readiness of low-income children. Based on a 'whole child' model, the program provides comprehensive services that include pre-school education; medical, dental, and mental health care; nutrition services; and efforts to help parents foster their child's development. Head Start services are designed to be responsive to each child's and family's ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage. The Congressionally-mandated Head Start Impact Study was conducted across 84 nationally representative grantee/delegate agencies. Approximately 5,000 newly entering 3- and 4-year-old children applying for Head Start were randomly assigned to either a Head Start group that had access to Head Start program services or to a non- Head Start group that could enrol in available community non-Head Start services, selected by their parents. Data collection began in fall 2002 and is scheduled to continue through 2006, following children through the spring of their 1st-grade year. The study quantifies the impact of Head Start separately for 3- and 4-year-old children across child cognitive, social-emotional, and health domains as well as ii on parenting practices. This book is essential reading for those in the education field.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Beginning to Play explores the young child’s right to a high quality, multi-sensory play environment where play really can begin. It builds on Goldschmied’s concept of Treasure Basket play, which involves a wide variety of everyday objects gathered together to stimulate all five senses of babies and young children. The book features detailed observations of babies beginning to play at and beyond the treasure basket. These observations support readers in offering rich play materials and experiences.

Juvenile Justice: An Introduction, Tenth Edition, presents a comprehensive picture of juvenile offending, delinquency theories, and the ways juvenile justice actors and agencies react to delinquency. Whitehead and Lab offer evidence-based suggestions for successful interventions and treatment and examine the prospects for rebalancing the model of juvenile court. This new edition includes insightful analysis and the latest available statistics on juvenile crime and victimization, drug use, court processing, and corrections. Special attention is given to female involvement, disproportionate minority contact, and diversity issues. The text also includes extensive discussion of police shootings, the issue of race, probation reform, life sentences for juveniles, recent Supreme Court decisions, and reform suggestions from Currie and Feld. An essential text for undergraduate juvenile justice courses, this book offers rich pedagogical features and online resources. Each chapter enhances student understanding with Key Terms, a What You Need to Know section, and Discussion Questions. Links at key points in the text show students where to get the latest information.

Life transitions differ concerning the intensity of the change and the intensity of the child’s reaction to that change. For most children, the first and most significant transition is from the family home to an institution of early care and education, which includes preschool. These transitions can also include children's passage from kindergarten to elementary school. However, the intensity of the child's reaction is related to the size of the change that is happening and also to who or what is involved in that change and the importance a child attributes to that someone or something. Supporting Children’s Well-Being During Early Childhood Transition to School is an essential scholarly publication that examines evidence-based practices and approaches that fully support a child’s well-being during transition periods in early childhood. It serves as a resource to rethink contemporary transition theoretical models, research studies, and applied practices. Featuring a wide range of topics such as emotional competency, language learners, and professional development, this book is ideal for academicians, psychologists, early childhood educators, daycare centers, curriculum designers, policymakers, researchers, education professionals, and students.

Children are the foundation of the United States, and supporting them is a key component of building a successful future. However, millions of children face health inequities that compromise their development, well-being, and long-term outcomes, despite substantial scientific evidence about how those adversities contribute to poor health. Advancements in neurobiological and socio-behavioral science show that critical biological systems develop in the prenatal through early childhood periods, and neurobiological development is extremely responsive to environmental influences during these stages. Consequently, social, economic, cultural, and environmental factors significantly affect a child's health ecosystem and ability to thrive throughout adulthood. Vibrant and Healthy Kids: Aligning Science, Practice, and Policy to Advance Health Equity builds upon and updates research from Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity (2017) and From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development (2000). This report provides a brief overview of stressors that affect childhood development and health, a framework for applying current brain and development science to the real world, a roadmap for implementing tailored interventions, and recommendations about improving systems to better align with our understanding of the significant impact of health equity.

High-quality early care and education for children from birth to kindergarten entry is critical to positive child development and has the potential to generate economic returns, which benefit not only children and their families but society at large. Despite the great promise of early care and education, it has been financed in such a way that high-quality early care and education have only been available to a fraction of the families needing and desiring it and does little to further develop the early-care-and-education (ECE) workforce. It is neither sustainable nor adequate to provide the quality of care and learning that children and families needâ€"a shortfall that further perpetuates and drives inequality. Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education outlines a framework for a funding strategy that will provide reliable, accessible high-quality early care and education for young children from birth to kindergarten entry, including a highly qualified and adequately compensated workforce that is consistent with the vision outlined in the 2015 report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation. The recommendations of this report are based on essential features of child development and early learning, and on principles for high-quality professional practice at the levels of individual practitioners, practice environments, leadership, systems, policies, and resource allocation.