Child Development Program Research Articles

Effectiveness of a comprehensive, five-year family support program for low-income children and their families: findings from the comprehensive child development program

A randomized experiment was conducted to test the effects of the Comprehensive Child Development Program (CCDP), a two-generation program that employed case management and home visiting to ensure multi-risk, low-income children and their parents a range of education, health, and social services to meet the complex needs of disadvantaged families. The evaluation of 21 CCDP projects, which followed 4,410 families for five years, found no statistically significant impact on CCDP families when they were compared with control families in either child outcomes (cognitive and socio-emotional development, and health) on parent outcomes (parenting, family economic self-sufficiency, or maternal life course). Since the intervention failed to change parenting behavior or family economic status, the two hypothesized pathways to affecting the well-being of the children, not unexpectedly there were no significant impacts of CCDP on children. The study suggests that the combination of case management and parenting education, delivered through home visits, is not an effective means of improving developmental outcomes for low-income children.

Evaluating child and family demonstration initiatives: lessons from the comprehensive child development program

The Comprehensive Child Development Program (CCDP) was a demonstration project designed to test a specific model of service delivery for young children and families in poverty. Following the evaluation’s failure to show strong impacts, early intervention has come under fire from opponents in the popular literature and in Congress. We conclude that shortcomings in both implementation and evaluation contributed to the failure to demonstrate effectiveness. Lessons learned from the CCDP are articulated, addressing the roles of demonstration projects and their evaluations, the problems associated with evaluating programs early in their implementation, the importance of assuring appropriate treatment quantity and quality, and the judicious use and interpretation of large-scale randomized evaluations.

Metaevaluation of “The Effectiveness of Comprehensive, Case Management Interventions: Evidence From the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program”

Metaevaluation of “The Effectiveness of Comprehensive, Case Management Interventions: Evidence From the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program”

Head start: Program and legislative update

EAD START is a federally funded child development program created to assist lowincome families. This article will give a brief overview about Head Start, its requirements, and its eligibility criteria. Recent legislative changes as well as strategies to assist pediatric nurses in working with their local Head Start program will also be discussed. Society has long been aware that a child's early preschool years are critical to growth and development and a successful transition to adult life. Several factors can adversely affect this process, but probably none as greatly as poor health and environmental limitations. Results of standardized testing have consistently shown an educational performance gap between children of low-income households as compared with those from more privileged backgrounds (Argetsinger, 1999). In an effort to provide some measure of equal opportunity for children who may be at risk, certain advocates for children and families in the 1960s sought ways to level the playing field for lowincome children by developing a program called Head Start.

The Effectiveness of Comprehensive, Case Management Interventions: Evidence from the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program

The Effectiveness of Comprehensive, Case Management Interventions: Evidence from the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program

The Role of Caring Practices and Resources for Care in Child Survival, Growth, and Development: South and Southeast Asia

This paper evaluates the extent to which programs for improving nutrition in seven Asian countries evaluate care practices and resources for care, and how this understanding is incorporated into their plans. Care practices and resources for care are defined according to the UNICEF framework, and the more unfamiliar care practices are described. The value of including care in nutrition programs is shown through several model programs. The significance of care not only for nutrition, but also for child development is highlighted. The most commonly mentioned care practice in the seven countries was breastfeeding, and the most widely recognized resource for care was maternal education. Care practices such as psychosocial care and care for women received less attention, as did the autonomy or decision-making power of the caregiver. Although the importance of care practices and resources for care is recognized, recommendations are general and lack specificity. Program planners will need training in scientific disciplines such as psychology or anthropology in order to develop strategies for incorporating care into nutrition and child development programs.

Using Home Visits for Multiple Purposes: The Comprehensive Child Development Program

The Comprehensive Child Development Program (CCDP) was a two-generation program that employed case management and home visiting to assure low-income children and their parents of a range of educational, health, and social services. Designed to meet the complex needs of disadvantaged families, CCDP was predicted by its planners to generate positive short- and long-term effects across a variety of child and parent well-being indicators. This article describes the CCDP program and reviews the results of the program evaluation. The evaluation of 21 project sites and 4,410 families followed for five years found no statistically significant impact of CCDP on program families when they were compared with control families in any of the assessed domains: early childhood education, child and family health, parenting education, family economic self-sufficiency, or maternal life course. The authors conclude that the results of this evaluation do not support home visiting as an effective means of social service delivery and parenting education for low-income families.

A Community Partnership with Parents: Investing in the Future

This article presents the findings of a home based parents support program that focuses on the human environment surrounding children. In collaboration between a health service, a public health unit and a university school of nursing in Perth, Western Australia, a three year (1995-1998) health promotion pilot project has been implemented. The program model is based on the Child Development Program developed in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland in the early eighties. This empowerment program is comprehensive, rather than targeting particular issues and focuses on the family's child-rearing environment in holistic terms. Raising the self-esteem of parents is a priority on the grounds that people lacking self-esteem and confidence often struggle to cope with life events and the demands of child rearing. The program, a partnership between community child health nurses and the community, recognises and builds on the skills of experienced mothers. Through semi-structured home visits, these women provide peer support and encouragement for new parents in their fundamental role of parenting. Evaluated through the collection of both qualitative and quantitative data, the outcomes of the pilot project have demonstrated an increase in the self-esteem of mothers, and gains in child development, immunisation, breast-feeding and family nutrition. In addition there is evidence of parents 'looking out for each other' and indications of a strengthening of social cohesion in the local community.

The effectiveness of comprehensive, case management interventions: Evidence from the national evaluation of the comprehensive child development program

Note: This publication evaluates the Comprehensive Child Development Program (CCDP), a case management and home visitation program designed to provide low-income families with educational, health, and social services. Home Based Home Visitation Program Evaluation Child Development Healthy Development Parent Education Public Health Services Case Management Early Childhood Education Early Intervention

Metaevaluation of “the effectiveness of comprehensive, case management interventions: evidence from the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program”

Metaevaluation of “the effectiveness of comprehensive, case management interventions: evidence from the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Child Development Program”

International Perspectives in Early Emotional Development

This article provides a unique look at development-the lessons highly industrialized nations can learn from the rest of the world. Thailand, for example, created a comprehensive child development program through integration of health, education, economic development, social welfare, and community involvement. The program was proven to improve developmental outcomes that included IQ and nutritional status.

Major trends and issues in early childhood education: challenges, controversies, and insights

This revised and updated edition provides essential social, historical, and philosophical perspectives in the field of early childhood education. Leading scholars and practitioners examine a variety of today's most significant and challenging subjects, including child development research, play, program models, assessment, diversity, inclusion, public policy, and advocacy. New for the Second Edition! Definitions and metaphors for the major terms-trends, issues, controversies, and challenges-that serve as the organizational structure for the book. A chapter delineating the issues on emergent literacy development, such as emergent literacy versus reading readiness, reading aloud versus phonemic awareness, and print skills versus books. An easy-to-use three-part organization-Child and Family Issues, Curricular Trends and Issues Affecting Practice, and Policy and Professional Development Issues.

Human Nature and Crime Control: Improving the Feasibility of Nurturant Strategies

The same evolutionary and ecological principles that organize our understanding of organisms and organic communities can be used to help understand criminal behavior and our responses to it. This approach suggests solutions for an important dilemma that confronts the United States. The dilemma is that preoccupation with problems such as gang violence, drug abuse, and street crime increasingly diverts resources and attention away from child development problems associated with the health, education, and welfare of young people. Just as a consensus is emerging about the importance of balancing traditional criminal justice system approaches to crime control with nurturant approaches that address child development concerns, child development program resources are dwindling. This dynamic is driven by a vicious cycle of media sensationalism, political expediency, and public impatience that encourages ineffective “quick fixes” for crime. An evolutionary ecological approach to crime control suggests ways to reverse this vicious cycle and increase the political, programmatic, and economic feasibility of child development programs.

The Challenge of Food Safety for Head Start Personnel

LEARNING OUTCOME: To determine food safety knowledge and attitudes of Head Start Personnel.The food safety knowledge and attitudes of Head Start personnel were surveyed at a regional nutrition conference. This study was unique because it surveyed a group of people responsible for providing meals to a highly susceptible population, preschool children in a child development program. Questionnaires were administered to all 74 conference participants from six states with 68 completing the survey, a response rate of 92%. Participants have good knowledge about food safety obtained from local health department course, formal class on the job, on the job training by supervisor, and college courses. Most of them correctly answered 20 of 31 questions on food safety knowledge and attitudes. Males (n=9) significantly scored higher (p<0.1) on food safety knowledge than female (n=58) participants. Scores on attitudes towards food safety were significantly higher (p⩽0.05) for those with college degrees. Participants who were trained on the job by supervisors or attended a local health department course had better attitudes toward food safety than those who did not revive either training. Those who had previous food production experience also had better attitude scores. The survey ascertained areas where further training on food safety is needed such as 1) hazard analysis and critical control points 2) emerging pathogens and 3) temperature control of food during delivery, storage, rethermalization, preparation, and service. In addition, emphasis on training regarding equipment sanitization, cooking end-points, and contrasting home versus institutional food handling practices is needed. Food safety should concern everyone involved in group feeding of highly susceptible populations. Additional research could perhaps include a pre- and post- test with concurrent observations of actual food handling practices in the food production areas.

Modernization, Urbanization, and Nutritional Care

Child-care beliefs and practices evolve to meet the needs of children within changing families and societies. Production technologies, economic structures, formal and non-formal institutions, and ideologies influence the care of young children. Nutritional care varies among premodern agrarian, modern industrial, and postmodern knowledge-based settings. Vital families in which parents and children learn together currently are emerging as the most favourable environment for child care. Policy implications of historic trends are: 1) nutritional care should be added to the definition of children's rights; 2) functional indicators of nutritional care should be built into systems that monitor children's well-being; 3) care services should be available to the whole child in the whole family, through multi-purpose networks of agencies and activities; 4) child and family development programmes should teach parents to enhance children's nutritional care and development; 5) the care motto “Preserve, Protect, Promote” should expand to “Rediscover, Relearn, and Readapt” beneficial caring from the past.

Escaping Poverty: The Promise of Higher Education

Escaping Poverty: The Promise of Higher Education

The Potential Health Benefits of Child Day Care

Child day-care programs are a part of an ecologic formulation of the contribution of family and the community to improved children's health. How does the promise of the possible become a reality? Head Start may provide some clues. As a large-scale national child-development program with integrated health, education, social services, and parent involvement components, Head Start assumes a responsibility for assuring access to needed health knowledge, health maintenance skills, and health services. It has standards for each component, a training and technical assistance capacity, and funding through bipartisan political support. It is not perfect; quality is uneven and it evolves as health standards are revised on the basis of new scientific information. Head Start places emphasis on community health advocacy. The needs of children and families will largely determine the combination of functions child care might assume. Until this nation recognizes that access to primary health care for all its citizens, especially its children, is non-negotiable, all child-care programs including Head Start are still at a significant disadvantage in realizing their potential.16 As the nation embraces the Education 2000 goal of all children being ready to learn when they enter school, child-care programs can play a significant role in helping children attain the health benefits that will foster that success in school.17 This cannot be accomplished by the programs alone, however. Health professionals must form partnerships with child-care providers to assist them in using their considerable expertise to promote the health and well-being of families who use their services.

The Development of Policy Recommendations to Address Individual and Family Needs of Infants and Young Children Affected by Family Substance Use

This article describes a process by which the state of California defined pertinent issues in the development of state policy regarding the individual and family needs of infants and young children affected by family substance use. The complex nature of the problem calls for a multifaceted approach to policy development. To this end, the California Child Development Programs Advisory Committee convened researchers and experienced practitioners in medicine, education, childcare, foster care, child development, psychology, teen counseling, chemical dependency, legislative offices, and government agencies for two scheduled “think tanks.” Twenty-one recommendations addressing 12 topics were generated and disseminated to the state administration, the legislature, state agencies, other state and local policymakers, and individuals in the private sector. These policy recommendations, as they apply to the delivery of early intervention services, are discussed.

Volunteers better than health visitors?

Unqualified volunteers may be better than health visitors at delivering child development programmes to disadvantaged first time mothers, a new report says.

Parent power

Dr Walter Barker outlines a new style of health visiting, the Child Development Programme