Understanding models of multidisciplinary collaborations in child welfare has become essential for policy development, program success, and improving outcomes for children in foster care. The authors present the state of Maryland's Guardianship Assistance Project (GAP) as a model of multidisciplinary collaboration in child welfare and describe the…

In March 2006 the Industrial Relations Commissions of New South Wales and Queensland utilised their equal-remuneration wage-fixing principles to address the gender undervaluation of childcare work. In doing so the tribunals explicitly rejected employer arguments used in the past to limit increases in award rates of pay for childcare workers. While…

This article provides an overview of what constitutes good-quality early care and education (ECE) and the staff costs embedded in these quality indicators. Caregiving adults and teachers are the foundation of quality in ECE, and their wages make up 70% of operating costs. Yet in 2000 only 18 of more than 700 occupations in the U.S. reported …

Evaluating school-based mental health services for children and youth with emotional disturbance (ED) has been a challenge for researchers. One particular challenge is the study design of using the student as the statistical unit of analysis, which in certain cases may lead to a violation of the "independence of error" assumption.…

Self-injurious behavior (SIB) is a disorder typically associated with developmental disabilities. However, throughout early childhood, some typically developing children also display behavior that is topographically similar to SIB but does not cause injury, commonly referred to as "proto-injurious behavior" (PIB). To date, little…

Background: Reliable measures of aggressive challenging behaviour are required if interventions aimed at reducing this behaviour among people with intellectual disability (ID) are to be formally evaluated. The present authors examined the reliability of the Modified Overt Aggression Scale (MOAS), an instrument not yet formally tested in those with…

Persons with profound and multiple disabilities (PIMD) are dependent on staff to be sufficiently knowledgeable as to provide them with appropriate day services. One important determinant of the appropriateness and adequacy of a day support program is the level to which staff have detailed and specific knowledge about the functional abilities and…

This article documents the challenges that young children face as they move from kindergarten to first grade and the important role that elementary school counselors can play in working with students, parents/caregivers, and teachers during this critical period of development. Research- and practitioner-based recommendations for effective…

Purpose: This study explored whether adult day service (ADS) use was associated with reductions in behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in individuals with dementia. Design and Methods: We used a quasi-experimental design to compare a group of 133 persons with dementia (PWDs) who initially enrolled in an ADS program to a…

In this article, we report a study in which we asked 137 parents and caregivers to evaluate a year-long family literacy program in which they participated. Parents valued the insights they gained about children's learning in general and literacy development in particular. They reported that they learned from each other as well as from the program…

This pilot study evaluated a 12-week group treatment program for preschool children with interpersonal sexual behavior problems (SBP; N = 85; 53 completed at least 8 sessions). Many children presented with co-occurring trauma symptoms and disruptive behaviors. In intent-to-treat analysis, a significant linear reduction in SBP due to number of…

Caregivers experience multiple losses during the downhill trajectory of a loved one's terminal illness. Using mixed methods, this two-stage study explored caregiver grief during a terminal illness and after the care recipient's death. Caregiver grief was a state of heightened responsiveness during end-stage care: anxiety, hostility, depression,…

Wellbeing is a well-used but ill-defined term in youth research. This paper describes research that explored the ways in which young people and youth workers define wellbeing. The findings suggest that both groups agreed that wellbeing was a multidimensional concept; however, the young people were more likely to consider wellbeing to be influenced…

Increasing enrollment in childcare centers has led to questions about the extent to which those environments foster child development in areas such as language. This study examined the language of childcare center caregivers during book sharing with children to describe caregivers' use of linguistic structures (declarative, imperative, and …

Language brokering describes the task in an intercultural language event undertaken by children in families with one or two non-national languages parents or caregivers. This paper examines the complex issues involved in being a language broker and explores these as they apply to a group of adolescents in Chinese families in the UK. The findings…