Objective: This article focuses on caseworkers' assessments of risk of maltreatment recurrence among families in contact with social services. Specifically, the article has two primary goals: (1) to examine the association between caseworkers' risk assessments and demographic, child, parent and family-level risk factors; and (2) to examine…

Throughout the Midwest and the southern United States, new groups of Hispanic/Latino and other immigrants are settling in large numbers. In many regions, very little infrastructure exists in social service, health care, and educational entities that would allow professionals to deliver much-needed services. Little data exist on the…

The "Annual Disability Statistics Compendium" is a publication of statistics on people with disabilities and government programs that serve the population with disabilities and is modeled after the Statistical Abstracts of the United States, published yearly by the U.S. Department of Commerce. The "Compendium" is designed to…

A family's housing unit provides more than simply shelter. It also provides a set of neighborhood amenities and a package of local public services, including, most critically, a local school. Yet housing and education policymakers rarely coordinate their efforts, and there has been little examination of the schools that voucher holders or other…

The number of children diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is rising and is now thought to be as high as 1:100. While the debate about best treatment continues, the effects of having a child diagnosed with ASD on family life remain relatively unexplored. This article, by Karola Dillenburger of Queens University Belfast, Mickey…

Little scientific research has focused on the measure of how positive wellbeing of people caring for people with disabilities. The purposes of the present study are to explore the wellbeing perception and its determinants of caregivers who caring for people with disability. We employed a cross-sectional, self-administrative structured…

This article describes a service learning project implemented jointly by undergraduate and high school students during summer. The service learning project was designed through a Summer Research Institute hosted at a Midwestern University; the institute encouraged faculty to recruit undergraduate students who would partner with area high school…

Weighted student funding (WSF) is used in several U.S. cities as a method for providing more funds to schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students. The practice has been used successfully in the Netherlands since 1985. Several factors make the success of the Dutch system unlikely to transfer to the United States, including the Dutch…

This booklet is for young people and their families, friends and supporters to read and talk about together. It is based on the stories of four young people. Big changes happened for some of them; others are still waiting for things to change. The goal of the booklet is to give students ideas about how they may want to plan or change things when…

Economic and demographic changes in rural areas continue to introduce big-city problems in small towns. These communities' ability and willingness to respond are likely to be influenced by the geography, culture, and array of organizations in rural places. But how these characteristics of rural places shape local response is hard to predict and as…

This article explores two separate traditions that educational psychologists (EPs) in the UK have for working with systems. One of these is "systems work" with organisations such as schools. The other is "systemic thinking" for working with families. Over the years these two traditions, systems work and systemic thinking, have…

It was November of 2006, when the author was attending a guardianship conference in Ft. Lauderdale. The author attended as Prosperity Life Planning (www.prosperitylifeplanning.org) a small, educational nonprofit organization, through which he educates and advocates for parents through the special needs planning process with area attorneys, benefit…

Despite the high level of funding and policy interest in prisoner reentry, there is still little rigorous scientific evidence to guide jurisdictions in developing reentry programs to enhance public safety, particularly for managing those who pose the greatest safety risks. The Boston Reentry Initiative (BRI) is an interagency initiative to help…

The authors of the primary articles in this special edition provide early and promising evidence that developmentally sensitive psychotherapeutic interventions and integrated care systems improve the lives of children who have been exposed to abuse or neglect. Why, then, do so many children in the social welfare system receive care that is not…

Implementing innovations in social and health-related service programs is a dynamic stage-based process. This article discusses training, adoption, implementation, and practice as sequential elements of a conceptual framework for effective preparation and implementation of evidence-based innovations. However, systems need to be prepared for change…