Describes a collaborative shared-reading project associated with an early-intervention program which provided pediatric day health care for young children identified as medically and/or environmentally at-risk. Consumer-oriented outcome data suggested that the project was effective in both empowering the caregivers as facilitators of emergent…

This KIDS COUNT pamphlet is part of a 3-year campaign to bring business and child care together to increase the quality and availability of child care for at-risk children in West Virginia. The pamphlet reports on the components of quality child care and on West Virginia's early childhood initiative, Educare. Emphasizing the positive effects of…

This report examines the extent and nature of states' participation in the At-Risk Child Care Program (ARCCP) and describes their problems and successes with it. The ARCCP was enacted in 1990 to provide child care services for children of low-income families who do not receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children and who need child care in…

This report questions the efficacy and utility of the Head Start program by challenging the widely accepted belief that early intervention can prevent future dependence and delinquency. This belief assumes that: (1) sweeping conclusions can be drawn from the study of a few unique preschool programs; (2) children's futures are fundamentally…

This book describes the history of the Head Start program. Encouraged by Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, in February, 1965, the Head Start Planning Commission presented a proposal for a program to the Johnson administration, which promoted it as a nationwide program to serve half a million poor children. By the…

This paper discusses the results of a study that investigated the effectiveness of a demonstration program designed to provide in-home intervention with parents and children in families with substance abuse issues. The goals of the program were to prevent further child abuse or neglect, prevent family breakdown and child placement, and facilitate…

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…

Explored within-group effects of mother-infant attachment and day care on children's social and emotional development in a high-risk, low income sample of mothers and infants who entered day care early, and a home-reared, middle-class sample of infants and their mothers. Found that the effects of early day care are influenced by security of…

Presents guidelines for the center director's task of identifying and intervening on behalf of a child at risk, whether the risk be of neglect, abuse, or developmental delay. Emphasizes that the role of director is one of referral rather than of diagnosis, and discusses ideas for making a referral process as beneficial as possible.(AA)