For more than a decade, Florida's Palm Beach County has been building a system of prevention and early intervention services to promote and support the healthy development and school readiness of children from birth to age 8. The county began this effort with a set of programs focused on serving families in four targeted geographic areas that have…

The Country Walk case in Dade County, Florida was long considered a model for how to prosecute a multi-victim child sexual abuse case involving young children. In the past 10 years, however, a contrary view has emerged that the case was tainted by improper interviewing and was likely a false conviction. This is the first scholarly effort to assess…

The Children's Services Council (CSC) of Palm Beach County funded Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago to conduct a 6-year longitudinal study to examine the use and effectiveness of an array of services in the county in promoting school readiness and school success and improving family functioning among children and families most in need of…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to (a) describe the timing of maltreatment recurrence and (b) measure associations between child demographics and characteristics of initial reports with recurrent maltreatment. Method: Using administrative data from the Florida Department of Children and Families, case histories of 189,375 children with an…

For more than a decade, Florida's Palm Beach County has been building an infrastructure of prevention and early intervention services to promote and support the healthy development and school readiness of children from birth to age 8. The county began this effort with a set of programs focused on serving families in four targeted geographic areas…