Service users and carers' (SUACs) inclusion in student selection days at English universities is accepted as standard practice, since such inclusion is mandated by a range of professional health and social work regulators. However, SUACs' voices are little heard; this study addresses this knowledge gap for the first time. Student selection…

The 2016 wildfires in Alberta, Canada, created numerous challenges for families with children under five years of age, due to the limited postdisaster access to early childhood development (ECD) programs, resources, and supports. In the immediate aftermath of the wildfires, families struggled to balance recovery activities with childcare…

Few studies have examined the experiences of community college students who are or were in foster care. Consequently, relatively little is known about why young people in foster care choose to enroll in community college, what happens to those young people once they enroll, or whether they are receiving the supports they need to achieve their…

Background/Context: The early school years are an important time for building family-school relationships (Sibley & Dearing, 2014). As such, family engagement is a top priority of organizations that serve young children, such as Head Start. Children whose parents report being involved in their school demonstrate greater social competence and…

Background: There is very little awareness of the speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) of rough sleepers. The small amount of documentation that does exist involves a wider group of homeless adults (not just rough sleepers), and reports that communication needs are an area of concern. Aims: To investigate: (1) the reported prevalence of…

Recent policy efforts in early care and education (ECE) have aimed to ensure that all children have access to high-quality ECE programming. However, there is debate about how to most effectively improve ECE quality at scale. The three papers in this dissertation provide new insights into the impacts of two widely-used policies aimed at improving…

Research Findings: Emotion talk (ET) is an emotion socialization practice theorized to promote children's socioemotional competence. The present study examined parent and child ET in two subgroups of Chinese-heritage families in low-income communities: Chinese immigrant families in U.S. (CA) and Taiwanese families in Taiwan (TW). In a sample of 75…

With over 1 in 5 Canadians identifying as an immigrant, Canada has been proud to call itself a nation of immigrants with a commitment to supporting refugees, from accepting thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s to Syrians fleeing civil war in 2015. In 2017, 44,000 refugees came as government-sponsored or privately sponsored refugees,…

This article describes a narrative development project undertaken by students on a History of Social Welfare module at a British university. Students were asked to choose a character, setting and story from a range of scenarios and time periods that reflected many of the key areas covered in lecture and seminar classes. The narrative was not…

This exploratory mixed methods case study examines the life goals of Finnish social services students (N = 151) and whether they justify their goals with self- or other-focused reasoning. Purpose is understood as reflecting the students' life goals that benefit not only oneself but also others. On the basis of this study, close relationships,…

The gravity of food insecurity among college students represents a critical issue for society at large and particularly for the students, faculty, staff, and administrators of higher education institutions. This article addresses what it means to be food insecure and the physical, mental, social, and academic toll it takes on students. The…

This study compared Medicaid service utilization and expenditures among adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to adolescents with intellectual disability (ID) as they aged into adulthood. Medicaid Analytic eXtract (MAX) data was used to identify a national cohort. Winsorization was utilized to control for expenditure outliers. A greater…

The incidence of infants with congenital syphilis (CS) has been accelerating in the United States and remains an issue of global concern. Infants with CS often experience poor birth, health, and developmental outcomes. These poor outcomes (e.g., prematurity, bone changes, neurodevelopmental impairment) may be exacerbated by social vulnerabilities…

Background: The transition to adulthood has been described as a difficult time in the lives of young people with intellectual disability. There has been little emphasis on young people with severe or profound intellectual disability specifically, even though their pathways may differ, due to greater support needs across the life course. Methods: A…

We present results of a randomized control trial of a two-generation English as a Second Language (ESL) program in which all families participated in Head Start while treatment parents also enrolled in a high dosage, family-focused ESL curriculum with supportive services. Examining 197 parent-child dyads among Spanish- (89%) and Zomi-speaking…