This article considers the needs of families of children with disabilities, the implications for interdisciplinary practice, and the changing pattern of early childhood disability. Family contributions to individuals with disabilities, the importance of early intervention, and the need for professionals to enable and empower families is…

A study of nine families and three service coordinators examined whether a family's level of satisfaction improves when the service coordination they receive adheres to a family-centered model. Results indicate a high degree of family satisfaction and a low degree of dissatisfaction when the model was adequately implemented. (Author/CR)

This article focuses on European early intervention for children with Down syndrome. Early intervention is viewed as a reconstruction of the construction processes in order to facilitate optimal response to environment conditions. It demands communication skills, a high level of transparency, theoretical education, and trust in the child's…

This article analyzes provisions of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, specifically regulations and relevant case law concerning provision of services to students in private schools. It offers guidelines for implementing the new provisions and suggestions for how to avoid violating the establishment clause in…

This review of recent British legislation and government plans for providing speech and language therapy (SLT) for children with special educational needs focuses on such issues as collaboration among services using a systems framework, functional issues in coordinating health and educational services, especially SLT, and structural issues such as…

The first part of this article critiques categorical approaches to special education, overrepresentation of minority children in special education, inclusion and exclusion, and white privilege. The second part of the article describes the potential of multicultural education, transformation, and participatory leadership approaches to address the…

Providing high-quality student services to students enrolled in distance education programs is a critical link to the academic success of this growing student population. (Contains 7 figures.)

In 1993 the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) began defining essential components of school health service programs, consistent with the public health model. The MDPH designed and funded the Enhanced School Health Service Programs to develop 4 core components of local school health services: (a) strengthening the administrative…

The purpose of this review is to analyze the school nursing role within the National Healthy School Standard (NHSS) in the United Kingdom with a view toward clarifying and strengthening the role of school nurses globally. Within the National Healthy School Standard framework, school nurses serve an integral role in linking health and education…

In April 2002, the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health was created by executive order to study the mental health care delivery system in our nation and to make recommendations for improvements so that individuals with serious mental disorders can live, work, learn, and fully participate in their homes and communities. In its…

Outcomes and mediators of differences in online and traditional course delivery were tested with a sample of 112 graduate students who completed an introductory course in training and development. Specifically, the individual learner characteristics of self-efficacy, motivation, goal orientation, and meta-cognition and their effects on success…

This paper addresses the issue of service quality evaluation within the higher education sector and stresses the need to develop measures that are both psychometrically and practically sound. The paper argues that recent debate surrounding the development of such measures has been too strongly geared toward their psychometric performance, with…

This paper reports the development of an international Masters in Information Studies between the Universities of Parma (Italy) and Northumbria (United Kingdom). Rather than concentrating on a detailed discussion of course content, it considers the strengths of an international collaborative course development and delivery and the issues involved…

This article aims to study the design and the organization of auditing systems to develop environmental or quality assurance schemes at the farm level and the role that extension services could play in these processes. It starts by discussing the issue of combining auditing and advisory activities and developing auditing competences. Empirical…

Foster care in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland has been in crisis throughout the past decade. This is most clearly demonstrated in the shortage of placements for children. The difficulty in recruiting new carers has taken a new significance for most agencies that struggle with more referrals than placements. As it becomes more difficult to…