The Baby Leadership Learning Collaborative (Baby LLC) initiative is a leadership group committed to bridging relationships across service sectors to promote infant-early childhood mental health and to break the multigenerational cycle of risk often associated with early adversity and trauma. Baby LLC has guided an early relational health focus…

Risk has become a driving force within the provision of welfare services in post-modern society (Kemshall [2002]. Conflicting knowledge's on risk: The case of risk knowledge in the probation service. "Health, Risk and Society," 2(2), 153-158). There is a dearth of research exploring how "risk" influences multi-agency…

Infancy is a time of extreme opportunity, but it is also a time of extreme vulnerability, particularly for those reared in high-risk environments. Although infant exposure to any risk is important to understand, this brief focuses on the experience and impact of "trauma," defined as witnessing or experiencing an event that poses a real…

This study examines the usefulness of a screening process implemented in the context of a Head Start home visit and compares families who screened positive for substance abuse with those who did not on an array of child and family indicators important for healthy child development. The sample included 1,105 low-income families with preschool-age…

David Finkelhor examines initiatives to prevent child sexual abuse, which have focused on two primary strategies--offender management and school-based educational programs. Recent major offender management initiatives have included registering sex offenders, notifying communities about their presence, conducting background employment checks,…

While data sources exist to measure and monitor the health of children in the United States, few take into account the many contexts in which children grow and develop, including their family and community environments. The National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH), conducted in 2007, addresses multiple aspects of children's health and…

Objective: The purpose of this study is to identify factors that predict recidivism among families in which the father is the perpetrator of physical abuse and to compare these factors to the factors that investigators believe are related to higher risk. Method: A case-comparison design was used to understand risk among 137 predominantly Caucasian…

Children in foster care face a challenging journey through childhood. In addition to the troubling family circumstances that bring them into state care, they face additional difficulties within the child welfare system that may further compromise their healthy development. This article discusses the importance of safety and stability to healthy…