About one-fifth of children involved in investigations for abuse or neglect are placed in foster care. Although some return to their families quickly, others may remain in foster care for years without permanent family relationships. In this article, Mark Testa, Kristen Woodruff, Roseana Bess, Jerry Milner, and Maria Woolverton examine the…

In this article, M. Rebecca Kilburn and Jill S. Cannon report on First Born, a targeted universal home visiting program operating in over half of New Mexico counties. Created in a small town in response to a lack of support for pregnant women and new parents, First Born adapts features of other home visiting programs, responding to conditions…

One way to assess the value of preschool education programs is to compare their upfront costs with the economic benefits they produce, measured by such outcomes as less need for special education services, improved high school graduation rates, higher earnings and less criminal activity in adulthood, and so on. What do such benefit-cost analyses…

How do we screen all families in a population at a single time point, identify family-specific risks, and connect each family with evidence-based community resources that can help them overcome those risks--an approach known as targeted universalism? In this article, Kenneth A. Dodge and W. Benjamin Goodman describe Family Connects, a program…

Los Angeles County's experience, write Christina Altmayer and Barbara Andrade DuBransky, shows how a universal offer of assistance can establish a foundation on which public and private agencies can plan meaningful systemic reform--and spark incentives for greater, more effective investments in services directed to vulnerable families. The…

There's a strong case for making social and emotional learning (SEL) skills and competencies a central feature of elementary school. Children who master SEL skills get along better with others, do better in school, and have more successful careers and better mental and physical health as adults. Evidence from the most rigorous studies of…

After-school programs offer young people opportunities for self-expression, exploring their talents, and forming relationships with supportive adults. That is, after-school programs promote young people's social and emotional learning (SEL) skills--whether the programs use that term or not. Despite these programs' potential, Noelle Hurd and Nancy…

Parents' health and children's health are closely intertwined--healthier parents have healthier children, and vice versa. Genetics accounts for some of this relationship, but much of it can be traced to environment and behavior, and the environmental and behavioral risk factors for poor health disproportionately affect families living in…

Most of the authors in this issue of "Future of Children" focus on a single strategy for helping both adults and children that could become a component of two-generation programs. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, on the other hand, look at actual programs with an explicit two-generation focus that have been tried in the…

Deborah Daro and Kenneth Dodge observe that efforts to prevent child abuse have historically focused on directly improving the skills of parents who are at risk for or engaged in maltreatment. But, as experts increasingly recognize that negative forces within a community can overwhelm even well-intentioned parents, attention is shifting toward…

Kimberly Howard and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn examine home visiting, an increasingly popular method for delivering services for families, as a strategy for preventing child abuse and neglect. They focus on early interventions because infants are at greater risk for child abuse and neglect than are older children. In their article, Howard and Brooks-Gunn…

Describes theoretical frameworks, including two public health models, that can inform the future development of domestic violence prevention strategies. Provides examples of innovative prevention strategies currently being implemented across the United States and discusses results from evaluations. (SLD)

Discusses the role of evaluation both in improving programs and in determining program effects. Explains how to conduct a strong and methodologically rigorous evaluation and discusses additional factors policymakers and practitioners should consider when interpreting the results of home-visiting program evaluations. (SLD)

Illustrates how evaluating the Oklahoma City Smoke Alarm Project increased its success in reducing residential fire-related injuries and deaths. The program distributed and tested smoke alarms in residential dwellings and offered educational materials on fire prevention and safety. Evaluation provided sound data on program processes and outcomes,…

This theme issue provides a summary of six evaluations of home-visiting models that have been implemented nationally. These model programs represent home-visiting programs across the country that help parents provide children with the best start in life. (SLD)