Brief
Low-income families face significant challenges navigating both low-wage employment or education and training programs and also finding good-quality child care. Programs that intentionally combine services for parents and children can help families move toward economic security and create conditions that promote child and family well-being. Although these programs in general are not new (see Background), policymakers and program leaders are now experimenting with innovative approaches to combining services. Yet, most currently operating programs, sometimes called “two-generation” or “dual…
Brief
This brief from the Head Start Health Manager Descriptive Study explores family engagement through these research questions: In what ways do Head Start/Early Head Start programs support family engagement in health-related aspects of program services? What are the barriers to family engagement in health-related aspects of program services from the health manager perspective? To what extent do barriers to family engagement differ by program or health manager characteristics and the populations served? What are the implications regarding family engagement for Head Start/Early Head Start health…
Brief
This mixed-method evaluation examined five community-based initiatives in Washington State intended to prevent child maltreatment and exposure to toxic stress, mitigate their effects, and improve child and youth development outcomes. The study had two phases. During the first phase (2013–2014), the research team assessed operational contexts, strategies used to increase community capacity to prevent ACEs, and impact at the county level. In the second phase (2015–2016), the researchers examined the extent to which sites developed capacity to achieve their goals, and the relationship of select…
Brief
This brief explains the Two-Generation (Two-Gen) approach for working with families builds well-being by creating a solid and stable foundation through integrated, intensive, and high-quality services in four areas of focus: early childhood education, elementary education, economic stability, and family engagement. It discusses findings from a research study that explored how three States (Connecticut, Colorado, and Utah) are development and implementing a Two-Gen framework in practice and how support for an intentional Two-Gen approach can be translated into a coordinated implementation…
Brief
This brief provides a summary of research findings on the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program, a parent involvement, school readiness program that helps low literacy parents prepare their three- to five-year-old children for success in school and life. HIPPY programs provide a 30-week direct instruction program to at-risk parents focusing on language development, problem solving, perceptual discrimination, and other pre-academic skills. It is free to parents and delivered by home visitors who live in the same high need neighborhoods as the families they serve…
Brief
This brief introduces the Family and Provider/Teacher Relationship Quality (FPTRQ) measures for early care and education stakeholders. The brief introduces the constructs and elements included in the measures, the measures' reliability, how the measures might be used, and how to use them. If you plan to use the measures, reviewing the full Family and Provider/Teacher Relationship Quality Measures: User’s Manual is recommended. (Author abstract modified)
Brief
This research-to-practice brief is intended to help policymakers, program managers, and practitioners learn how the newly released Family and Provider/Teacher Relationship Quality (FPTRQ) measures can be used to complement or supplement two approaches, Strengthening Families™ and the Head Start Parent, Family and Community Engagement (PFCE) frameworks, and their related self-assessments, that have been frequently used by Early Care and Education (ECE) stakeholders to support their work with families and to assess their programs, providers and teachers in these efforts. (Author abstract)
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This fact sheet advises families when to ask for help and provides information on state resources in Florida.
Brief
Deployment and its possible consequences, including a service member's injury, psychological trauma, or death, put considerable strain on military children and families. Most of them are resilient in the face of this adversity. Still, the psychological distress they experience can reverberate through the family, impairing the healthy functioning of parents and children alike. As a nation, we owe these families a system of care that emphasizes not just treatment but also prevention, helping them draw on their own resources for resilience, as well as those of their communities. We propose a…
