The Smart Beginnings project in Arizona is designed to increase public awareness and parent education about early childhood development and family support resources. The program is intended to identify, link, establish, and expand a public/private family support system and improve the quality and increase availability of infant and toddler child…

The Better Care for the Babies (BCTB) Project was initiated in April 1989 to help states improve the quality of infant and toddler child care, especially for low-income children whose parents are in the labor force and/or making the transition from welfare to work. The BCTB Project initiated ongoing, negotiated, goal-directed technical assistance…

Smart Start is a broad-based community initiative to ensure that all of North Carolina's children arrive at school healthy and ready to learn. This study examined the effect of Smart Start on the quality of child care from 1994-1996. Data were collected from child care centers in 12 counties implementing the initiative. Data collectors visited 180…

Families undergo difficulties in trying to negotiate the labyrinth of early childhood services offered in Illinois. Because of the multiplicity of programs and scarce funding, many children and families do not receive the services they need. Coordination among programs and services is also limited. This paper offers background on how the…

For the Webster Avenue Family Resource Center (WAFRC) in Rochester (New York), growth and diversity marked 1989, with a total of 615 persons (up from 512 in 1988) from 273 families participating in over 12,000 hours of service. There was a related growth in space and staff. Diversity was enhanced through the following means: (1) development and…

The lives of poor single mothers and their children are explored, first grounding the present situation historically and pointing out their "other" status when examined against normal motherhood and family images. The first two chapters discuss the historical images of childhood and the family as they have developed in Western civilization. Part 2…

Smart Start is a multi-disciplinary, comprehensive, community-based initiative to serve North Carolina children under age 6 and their families to ensure that all children enter school healthy and prepared to succeed. To achieve this, local county partnerships have focused both their attention and their funds on three major areas of service…

Smart Start is a multi-disciplinary, comprehensive, community-based initiative to serve North Carolina children under age 6 and their families to ensure that all children enter school healthy and prepared to succeed. To achieve this, local county partnerships have focused both their attention and their funds on implementing child care programs,…

All 18 Washington State Even Start sites participated in the program's evaluation. Site coordinators administered the assessment and evaluation measures to the adults served by the program and to teachers working with children at both entry and exit from the program. An indepth study was conducted of 134 families for whom there were complete sets…

As states respond to major welfare legislation in providing assistance and other interventions to help adults on welfare become ready to work, the challenge of helping these adults in their parenting skills and in promoting resilience in their children has often been ignored. This issue brief addresses the challenge of promoting resilience in…