How do we screen all families in a population at a single time point, identify family-specific risks, and connect each family with evidence-based community resources that can help them overcome those risks--an approach known as targeted universalism? In this article, Kenneth A. Dodge and W. Benjamin Goodman describe Family Connects, a program…

Parental sensitivity and nurturance are important mechanisms for establishing biological, emotional, and social functioning in childhood. Sensitive, nurturing care is most critical during the first three years of life, when attachment relationships form and parental care shapes foundational neural and physiological systems, with lifelong…

Project DULCE (Developmental understanding and legal Collaboration for everyone) integrated the Strengthening families approach to building family protective factors into routine health care visits for infants in a primary health care setting. The core collaborators--Boston medical Center pediatric primary care, the medical-legal partnership |…

Young children who have experienced early adversity are at risk for developing disorganized attachments. The efficacy of Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), an intervention targeting nurturing care among parents identified as being at risk for neglecting their young children, was evaluated through a randomized clinical trial. Attachment…

Federal directives require that any child less than 3 years old with a substantiated case of abuse be referred to the early intervention (EI) system. This article details the need and presents a vision for a trauma-informed EI system. The authors describe two exemplary program models which implement this vision and recommend steps which the field…

Pamela High, MS, MD, co-director of the Infant Behavior, Cry and Sleep Clinic at the Brown Center for the Study of Children at Risk, discusses the phenomena of infant crying and the impact it has on families. In most cases, infant crying will peak and resolve in the early months, but infant irritability can increase the risk of maternal…

In 2010, Congress authorized the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program by enacting section 511 of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 711, which also appropriated funding for fiscal years 2010 through 2014. Subsequently enacted laws extended funding for the program through fiscal year 2022. The program is…

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation's (OPRE's) Division of Child and Family Development (DCFD) is responsible for research and evaluation related to Head Start programs, early childhood development, child care, child maltreatment, and child welfare services. OPRE's research in the area of child and family development focuses on young…

The Strong Start Study tested an innovative, High-Fidelity Wraparound intervention with families in early recovery from substance use. The Strong Start Wraparound model addressed the complex needs of pregnant and parenting women who were in early recovery to increase the protective factors of parental resilience, social connections, concrete…

"The 2021 Pro-Kid Policy Agenda for California" is the comprehensive state-level roadmap to ensure that all children have the necessary supports to reach their full potential. California has an obligation to end systemic injustices that create barriers to kids of color, as well as kids living in poverty and undocumented kids, from…

Responses to traumatic stress during the earliest years of life can change quickly and can be difficult to identify because of the young child's rapid rate of development. The symptoms of traumatic stress will depend on the child's developmental level and individual coping styles, as well as the quality and nature of the child's most important…

Today, levels of mistreatment of children are internationally reported as having reached epidemic proportions. Throughout recorded history babies and young children have suffered acts of violence by parents, care providers and others. However, "some believe that, for the first time in history, we are beginning to face the true prevalence and…

Home visiting programs for at-risk mothers and their infants have proliferated nationally in recent years, yet experimental studies of home visiting have yielded mixed findings. One promising strategy for explicating the effects of early home visiting is to examine moderators of program impacts. This study assessed the roles of maternal depression…

Objective: Managing a crying infant is a challenge universally faced by new parents. This study examined whether parental interpretations, feelings, and behaviors following exposure to a 2-minute videotaped segment of a crying infant varied as a function of child physical abuse (CPA) risk and exposure to cues of hostility (i.e., hostile priming).…

Objective: To examine the underlying mechanisms of adults' intended caregiving responses to cry sounds in a behavioral genetic design and to investigate the role of cry pitch and perceived urgency in sensitive and harsh caregiving responses. Methods: The sample consisted of 184 adult twin pairs (18-69 years), including males and females, parents…