Head Start is a national program that helps young children from families with low incomes prepare to succeed in school. It does this by working to promote children's early learning and health and their families' well-being. In 2021, the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of…

Existing research has found that home visiting programs for families with young children can improve children's development and strengthen caregivers' and families' well-being. However, the pandemic created numerous challenges for home visiting programs, forcing them to deliver services online or in a hybrid format and to adapt the content of…

Introduction: Children's and adolescents' behavioral problems are one of the main concerns in today's society families. Confronted with these problems, there are families that can very well cope with them and get ahead, whereas other families are overwhelmed without knowing how to act. This difference may be related the non appropriate use of…

Research highlights the vulnerability of Black mothers and their infants, who experience higher rates of stress, preterm birth, low birth weight, and infant mortality than other racial groups. This article describes the development and implementation of the Relationships and Parenting Support (RAPS) Program, a community-based, family-focused…

The unexpected many years of global conflict since 9/11 have taken their toll on more than just the service members -- their families, most especially their children, have paid a significant price by living with the anxiety and stress associated with multiple deployments, safety concerns for the absent parent or caregiver, media coverage overload,…

The Fostering Hope Initiative is a neighborhood-based Collective Impact initiative that promotes optimum child and youth development by supporting vulnerable families, encouraging connections between neighbors, strengthening systems to ensure collective impact, and advocating for family-friendly public policy. This article describes the…

Recent studies have confirmed that repeated wartime deployment of a parent exacts a toll on military children and families and that the quality and functionality of familial relations is linked to force preservation and readiness. As a result, family-centered care has increasingly become a priority across the military health system. FOCUS…

This study used a pre-experimental and post-experimental design to evaluate a TEACCH-based Early Intervention Programme. Thirty-one parents of 18 preschool children recently diagnosed with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder attended the eight-week programme delivered by trained facilitators. Parents completed pre-intervention and post-intervention…

Federally funded Healthy Marriage Initiative (HMI) programs provide marriage education as well as other services to low-income diverse individuals and couples at many points along the marital continuum with improving children's well-being as the overarching purpose. These programs need appropriate measures of healthy marriage for couples with…

The report presents evaluation findings for a three-year early intervention, home-based program in Vancouver, British Columbia, by comparing 12 served and 12 nonserved families with profoundly deaf children under age three. Results indicated that several families had more developmentally mature communication, lower stress, and higher quality…

The Parent Services Project (PSP) is a family resource program which provides supportive activities for highly stressed and socially isolated parents based on the "social support as a stress-buffer" model of primary prevention. A PSP evaluation followed parents as they went through the PSP program and compared them with a matched control…

A crucial question for evaluating nationally or internationally implemented programs is whether local adaptations detract from program quality and effectiveness. An evaluation examined the program successes and challenges encountered in the first 5 years of Home-Start in the Netherlands, a home-based family support program for families with young…