The family as a basic social unit needs strategic support and strength to carry its weight, relative to other social institutions. This article focuses on why it is important to help people learn to be in a family and presents the construct of becoming family literate (different from family literacy). This learning is a legitimate platform from…

Multidisciplinary support for families of newborns is critical for their health and safety. This article describes three programs at one urban hospital which were implemented to (a) improve breastfeeding support, (b) enhance practitioners' observation and communication skills, and (c) provide a comprehensive social response to the urgent…

This article is excerpted from a chapter in "Finding Hope in Despair: Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health" (edited by Marian Birch, published 2008 by ZERO TO THREE). Therapeutic intervention with children and families is not always successful, but the professional literature does not often address treatment failures. To address this need,…

This article assesses the longitudinal effects of risk and resilience on unmarried nonresident fathers' engagement with children across the first 3 years of their lives. The authors used a subsample of 549 men from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study who were unmarried and noncohabiting at the time of the child's birth. They found not…

This paper reviews the research on youth empowerment in seven child welfare programmatic areas. A lack of studies specifically focused on the empowerment of youth in foster care was found. Conceptual perspectives and existing data, however, suggest that the empowerment of youth in and transitioning out of care is essential and should be overtly…

Large numbers of young children spend significant amounts of time in early childhood educational settings. Concerns about the quality of this experience have increased substantially in recent years. Further, as social inequalities in Australia continue to grow the gap between disadvantage and advantage widens despite overall levels of increased…

The study analyzes the lexical properties of the linguistic context that children from marginalized urban neighborhoods from Buenos Aires, Argentina, are exposed to in the literacy situations generated by an at-home early literacy program. The analysis is focused on the comparison of the vocabulary that these children are exposed to daily with the…

With the tendency of low-income African American and Latino children identified at-risk for school readiness and school success compared to their early-childhood counterparts, Head Start personnel are challenged to examine the role of family strengths in the promotion of academic success for these populations. This article provides a rationale for…

Parent involvement programs can play an essential role in the academic success of Latino youth. This article reports the effectiveness and evaluation of two new Extension programs that help Latino parents become more involved in their youths' academics. The Latino Parent and Family Advocacy and Support Training (LPFAST) targets parents of K- 8th…

There is strong consensus in California and in the country around the notions of equal opportunity for all children, and giving kids a chance of having it better than their parents. The reality in California is that most families lack the means and resources to provide their children with the basic building blocks of a productive life in the 21st…

The Promising Practices Network (PPN) on Children, Families and Communities (www.promisingpractices.net) began as a partnership between four state-level organizations that help public and private organizations improve the well-being of children and families. The PPN website, archived in June 2014, featured summaries of programs and practices that…

The purpose of this article is to present a family intervention model to family service providers that builds on previous research in areas of social support and family problem solving. The Family Outreach Model provides a set of strategies for engaging and working with families in five phases of family coping at different points in time in the…

For 20 years, Advocates for Children of New Jersey has published the Newark Kids Count Data Book, a one-stop source for child well-being data on our state's largest city. Newark Kids Count includes the latest statistics, along with five-year trend data, in the following areas: demographics, family economic security, food insecurity, child health,…

Obesity, poor health, and limited physical activity are major health concerns. The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) improves the health and well-being of limited resource families and youth. Additionally, EFNEP leads to public savings. Research shows that better health is associated with reduced health care costs, less…

In 2009, (and over a six week period) the National Literacy Trust (NLT) hosted a survey that was offered to the 21 local authorities making up the Partners in Literacy network at that time. Partners in Literacy (PiL) is a pilot project, funded from 2009 by the then Department for Children, Schools and Families and delivered by the NLT in…