The article by Fantuzzo, McWayne, and Bulotsky (2003) describes a model for addressing the former U.S. Surgeon General's (USDHHS, 1999) priorities for improving mental health service delivery to the nation's children. The authors identify several elements that characterize their own work and that can guide the work of school psychologists and…

During the past three decades, there has been an increase in knowledge about early childhood development. Early experiences can function as either risk factors or protective factors for a child's future health and development. This has led to concern about how current health systems contribute to the quality of the earliest experiences of life.…

A child development team in a children's services unit of a mental health center should: (1) formulate a broad philosophy of treatment for young child clients; (2) evaluate treatment approaches to determine the extent to which they facilitate or conflict with that philosophy; (3) assess inservice training needs to ensure competency-based service…

The social work clinician is witnessing among children and youths a sharpening awareness of possible nuclear catastrophe. Emerging research suggests that this concern reflects a pervasive preoccupation among youth. What adults might do until more definitive knowledge arises is discussed. (Author/ABB)

Increasingly, kindergarten has become a full day of school, and nearly the whole day is devoted to academic instruction. Early childhood education is being pushed strongly toward the cognitive approach, with strong emphasis on early academic achievement, including the testing of young children to measure their accomplishments. What is lost or…

The authors suggest that specific methodologies for assessing child satisfaction with treatment can be systematically developed once a more explicit developmental framework has been delineated in the area of children's understanding of medical and psychiatric disorders and their treatments. (Author/BW)

This paper reviews a New Haven, Connecticut school intervention project as a model for replication in other schools. The functions of a school advisory committee, parent participation, a mental health team, and a social skills curriculum are described as the principal components of the project. The need for preservice as well as inservice training…

Raises concerns about the failure of mental health service providers to address the psycho-developmental needs of people with mental retardation, especially incarcerated individuals with severe behavior disturbances and both mental illness and mental retardation. A "flight from developmental theory" is seen in most service providers to this…

This essay examines the challenges that today's children and families face due to the rapidly changing nature of modern society, and suggests some solutions to help ensure the optimal development of children and adolescents. Rapid technological change, the decline of the extended family, the increased number of women in the workplace, and…

Examines Progressive Life Center's (PLC) Therapeutic Foster Care program and its incorporation of NTU psychotherapy into its program model. Describes how PLC strives to improve the delivery of mental health services through culturally competent therapeutic techniques for African Americans, including seriously emotionally disturbed children. (MOK)

The UCLA Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities (CHCFC) has developed the School Readiness Critical Pathways (SRCPs) as an evidence-based conceptual model that links related outcomes and strategies. This helps to organize an array of broad and diffuse evidence regarding the strategies that produce school readiness outcomes for…

The federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau has launched a five-year initiative that will support state efforts to build comprehensive early childhood service systems. This initiative--the State Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Initiative (SECCS)--provides two year planning grants followed by three year implementation grants to the 50 state…

If early childhood systems are to be effective at the population level then they must be able to provide family-centered care to all the racial, ethnic and cultural groups that they serve. Despite major policy driven and technological advances in healthcare, health disparities across different races and ethnicities persist. For example, the infant…