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Navigating Excellence - Parent Center Assistance & Collaboration Team
Region A E-News
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Inspirational Quote
"Once I knew only darkness and stillness... my life was without past or future... but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living." - Helen Keller
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Message from Carolyn & Diana
As Parent Centers, we often work with families and youth who are unaware of their rights and the resources that are available to help them. The information, tools, and strategies we share, and the support we provide, often make all the difference in the world to their capacity to access those rights and resources and achieve a bright future. Our work can be frustrating, but we need to take the time to step back and recognize the positive impact we have to give us the strength to continue in the face of that frustration. NEPACT is here to help you! Don't hesitate to contact us at any time; we're just an email or a call away. It was great to see those of you who attended OSEP Leadership and we look forward to seeing you at our next convening. (More to come!)
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Reminder about the NE-PACT/Region A Parent Center Workspace!
You've been invited to join NE-PACT: A group for Region A Parent Centers.
Check your email for this invitation to our
universal location to house all of our resource collections, materials, documents, and files, including the Transition Resource Repository, Trauma Toolkit, Drop-in call notes, webinar announcements and recordings, peer to peer and CQI applications, TA resources, and much more! Reach out to Rosslin Mensah-Boateng at
rmensah-boateng@spanadvocacy.org
if you can't find your invitation or need other assistance accessing the new Region A parent center workspace.
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Featuring...
INCLUDEnyc: INCLUDEnyc features an ongoing blog on important issues impacting children, youth and young adults with disabilities and their families. The most recent blog focuses on one of INCLUDEnyc's over 350 community partnerships to deliver trainings and events for young people with disabilities and their families, the Chatham Square Public Library on the Lower East Side. Chatham Square hosts monthly INCLUDEnyc workshops on topics such as "Parenting a Child with a Disability," "Turning 5", and "Readiness to Join the World of Work." By collaborating with partners who serve thousands of children and families, INCLUDEnyc expands its reach and its impact.
Find out more about INCLUDEnyc's blog.
PEAL Parent Center (PA PTI) & HUNE (Philadelphia CPRC)
: PEAL Parent Center and HUNE are collaborators in the Pennsylvania Statewide Family Network along with the PA Office of Special Education Programs and PaTTAN (the PA Training and TA Network). The Parent Partnership was formed to raise awareness among Pennsylvania families and to create a unified statewide network that leads change by raising expectations for all students so they have access to the general education curriculum and Pennsylvania education standards. The Parent Partnership supports the efforts of FAMILIES TO THE MAX (F2MAX), which
grew from Project MAX, a grant designed to increase opportunities for students with the most complex needs to learn the same school work as their classmates without disabilities. Since then, FAMILIES TO THE MAX has grown to include families maximizing the potential of all children receiving special education services. Through family, educational, and community collaboration, this collaborative effort works to overcome obstacles and promote change and expectations for all children. When families and professionals work together and presume competence (believe in the abilities of all students), everyone can learn and be proud of their accomplishments. More information and to access the excellent resources.
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Opportunity to Make an Impact
Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family School Partnerships (Version 2):
The Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family School Partnerships has been updated, and there is a new website with related resources
. The "authors" are requesting feedback on the new framework (for example, in "The Challenge" column, Educators are on top of Families; there is no mention of family organizations; there is no mention of "decision-makers" in the summary of the roles of families; etc.). This is an important opportunity to influence the new framework for the better! They are also seeking content submissions of family professional partnership resources. While there is no deadline for comments, the sooner the better!
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Upcoming Events/Dates to Remember
Breaking Down Barriers: Native American Conference on Special Education, September 16-17, Albuquerque: The Education for Parent of Indian Children with Special Needs' Native American Conference on Special Education has reached parents from across Indian Country and Canada for almost 2 decades. The conference is designed to provide resources to families of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities, developmental delays, and special healthcare needs. Parents are taught skills and provided with information that will aid them in advocating on their child's behalf, thus creating opportunities that will positively impact systems, policy, and delivery of services that promote equity and quality service. Tribal leaders and special education professionals will learn from their peers, constituents, students, parents, and other advocates in promoting equal education opportunities for students with special needs.
Find out more.
National Federation of Families for Children's Mental Health 30th Anniversary Conference, November 14-16, Phoenix, Arizona: A full day Serving on Groups Train-the-Trainer and half day Leading by Convening workshop will be featured at this conference, along with an array of other useful workshops.
Find out more and register.
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Non-Profit Management Resources
Executive Director's Guide to Financial Leadership:
This expert guide outlines essential steps for EDs: transforming your annual budget analysis, deciding whether or not income diversification is the way to go, achieving a robust reserve, and equipping your board for effective financial governance. Access it here.
Succession Planning
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Teach Them How to Say Good-bye: Succession Planning for Remarkable Leaders
addresses the following topics: How do leaders ensure the vision, mission, and objectives for their programs have legs to guarantee that a principled legacy continues past their tenure in early childhood policy and practice? Starting succession planning well before a departure is on the horizon will help the transition to go smoothly when the day arrives.
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Family-Centered and Youth-Centered Services Resources
Meeting the Needs of ALL Families: The Family-Run Executive Director Leadership Association (FREDLA), a membership organization of Executive Directors of family-run organizations serving families who have children and youth with mental health challenges, recently released a resource guide for families and providers that highlight the rich diversity and unique needs of today's families.
Meeting the Needs of ALL Families is designed to remind all of us that each family is unique, leaving its members to be the only ones to define it - in their way, from their culture, and through their truth.
Download it here.
Serving Asian-American Families
: The National PTA's Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit includes resources aimed at helping you understand and better engage the wide diversity of Asian-American families. Check it out.
Collaborative Leadership Practices to Engage Diverse Youth: Collaboration should be the way we do business for young people. We know that no one youth program can support every child's needs and engage youth from every background. But by working in collaboration with other programs, we can bring our commitment to enriching the lives of young people to even more of them. Read about these six collaborative leadership practices.
For Best Results, Engagement Comes First: One of the most challenging parts of working with youth is finding ways to authentically engage with them when working under time constraints. For this reason, Youth ERA - a national nonprofit specializing in peer-delivered services and youth empowerment - created the Youth Engagement Kits. The kits are designed to build rapport, develop trust, identify goals, and increase engagement during the first initial meetings between a youth and provider. Find out more.
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Staff Development Resources
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Bilingual/LEP
Dual Language Learners & Head Start: New Tool Helps Programs Better Serve DLLs:
Check out this piece that highlights a new tool that helps programs identify their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to serving Dual Language Learners.
Promoting Success of English Language Learners: CEELO and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) published the "
Practical Guide for State Education Agencies to Promote Success of English Learners PreK-Grade 3." This guide aims to support state education agencies and early education partners develop coherent, research-based policy by guiding thinking, discussion, data collection, and gap analyses of current practices and policies that can lead to more intentional decision making relative to young dual language learners (DLL) and English learners (EL).
ELL Students Stigmatized by Teachers: Do ELL students get stigmatized by teachers? This study says yes; it suggests that English-learner classification has a "direct and negative effect on teachers' perceptions of students' academic skills."
Check it out.
Older Youth in Foster Care Need Support to Make a Successful Transition to Adulthood: "Although fewer older youth entered the child welfare system than in prior years, their experiences in foster care warrant attention because adolescence is a period of major brain development in which youth learn the decision-making and coping skills needed to become healthy and productive adults. Normal adolescent development involves increased risk-taking and self-discovery, but a lack of (or disconnection from) parents and supportive adults who could help them navigate this turbulent period may make it harder for older youth in care to successfully transition into adulthood."
Find out more.
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Data
IDEA National Child Counts for Part C and Federal Appropriations:
Part C child count data is reported as the number of infants and toddler receiving services on a specific state-designated date between October 1 - December 1 of the Federal Fiscal Year (FFY). The FFY runs from October 1 - September 30. This means, for example, that FFY 2013 child count data is from the Fall of 2012. ECTA has recently updated our data charts comparing state annual IDEA federal appropriations and child counts to reflect FFY 2018 data. Read more.
IDEA National Child Counts for Preschool Special Education (Section 619) and Federal Appropriations:
Section 619 child count data is reported as the number of preschool children receiving services on a specific state-designated date between October 1 - December 1 of the Federal Fiscal Year (FFY). The FFY runs from October 1 - September 30. This means, for example, that FFY 2013 child count data is from the Fall of 2012. ECTA has recently updated our data charts comparing state annual IDEA federal appropriations and child counts to reflect FFY 2018 data. Read more.
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Discipline
Racial Disparities in Discipline:
The US Civil Rights Commission is calling for schools to combat racial disparities in discipline. Students of color who have disabilities are disciplined at a higher rate than their white peers in school, according to this report from the US Commission on Civil Rights.
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Early Childhood/Early Intervention
Preschool Interventions for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review of Effectiveness Studies
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A recent study in Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders reviewed 16 studies that provided early intervention to children with autism spectrum disorder who were attending inclusive preschools. Researchers targeted studies evaluating interventions that were implemented under real-world conditions. These studies were summarized in terms of (a) participant characteristics, (b) intervention procedures, (c) procedures for training teachers, (d) study design, (e) outcomes, (f) study quality, and (g) social validity. Researchers found that positive outcomes for children and/or teachers were reported in most studies. However, methodological limitations were identified for most of the studies, which the researchers suggest indicates a need for additional higher-quality research. Researchers suggest that teachers may be able to effectively deliver early intervention to young children with autism spectrum disorder in inclusive preschool settings. Read more.
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Education Reform/Every Student Succeeds Act/School Improvement
ESSA and Addressing Barriers to Learning and Teaching: Is there Movement toward Transforming Student/Learning Supports? This report is meant as an imperative wake-up call for expanding the prevailing focus of school improvement policy and practice. The report provides analyses of responses from state departments of education, school districts, and leadership organizations about how they are pursuing the opportunity the Every Student Succeeds Act provides to transform the way schools address barriers to learning and teaching. The analyses highlight the current state of affairs and the degree to which there are indications of innovative new directions. Major concerns are raised about the way efforts to address barriers to learning and teaching are conceived, implemented, and continue to be marginalized in school improvement policy and practice. The report concludes with a discussion of new directions. Check it out.
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Equity
Addressing Equity in Teaching Standards:
Check out this report that analyzes teaching standards in all 50 states to better understand whether states' expectations for teachers incorporate culturally responsive teaching.
Child Care and Early Education Equity: A State Action Agenda
: Child Care and Early Education Equity: A State Action Agenda
outlines the important role state policymakers can play to ensure equity in their states' early education efforts. High-quality child care and early education is critical for child development and family economic security-and it can have a particularly positive impact on the well-being of families with low incomes.
CLASP's
action agenda describes key state early education programs, significant challenges such as racial disparities and underinvestment, and recommendations for how state leaders can meaningfully improve policies and programs. State leaders have many options and opportunities to significantly improve their child care and early education programs. They should consult a range of experts-including those with lived experience-offer professional development for providers and expand services to underserved populations. Above all, states should meaningfully invest in child care and early education, which is an investment in the present and future well-being of their states. Access the agenda.
Securing for All the Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness:
Read this exploration of how child poverty, trauma and Adverse Childhood Experiences, and lack of family supports, are keeping our youth from rising.
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Health
CDC Healthy Schools: BAM! A Website for Kids: The CDC Healthy Schools program has developed the Body and Mind website for kids ages 9-12, their parents, and teachers, which features fun and engaging information on health topics such as managing stress, including an original comic series.
Check it out.
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IDEA/Special Education
Child Find Self-Assessment:
OSEP, with the collaboration and support of ECTA, DaSy and IDC (for Sections II and III), developed this voluntary self-assessment tool to assist states in meeting regulations and implementing best practices related to child find. It will assist states in understanding and documenting their work around child find regulations and in identifying best practices to improve the efficiency of their child find efforts. Access the tool.
Early Childhood Child Outcomes:
FFY2017 national data on IDEA Part C early intervention and Part B preschool programs' early childhood outcomes are now available. Each year ECTA prepares a 2-page document showing trend data since FFY2013. Large percentages of children continue to show greater than expected gains, and large percentages of children continue to leave the programs with age expected skills. There has been little year-to-year change in the numbers, which speaks to the stability of the data. Although there is stability in the national data, there continues to be fluctuation of the numbers within states. The number of states submitting high-quality data has more than doubled since 2008, but states are still building the capacity to collect valid and reliable data.
Read more.
Early Childhood Family Outcomes:
FFY2017 national IDEA Part C early intervention family survey data are now available. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds state Part C programs to provide early intervention services to support infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. All states and jurisdictions receiving Part C funding are required to report data annually to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in the U.S. Department of Education on the percentage of families who agreed that early intervention has helped their family know their rights, effectively communicate their child's needs, and help them help their child develop and learn. Read more.
Special Education Funding:
This piece from the Education Commission of the States highlights five ways that states limit special education expenditures: flat caps, census caps, reimbursement caps, resource-allocation minimums, and minimum thresholds.
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Immigrant
Early Care & Education Participation Among Immigrant Families:
This Urban Institute report describes early care and education participation among children of immigrants.
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Inclusion
LRE Position Statement: The Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities (CCD), the national membership organization of about 100 disability advocacy organizations, has issued a
Position Statement on the Least Restrictive Environment/Inclusion.
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Juvenile Delinquency/Juvenile Justice
Juvenile Justice Resources Hub: The Juvenile Justice Resource Hub is a comprehensive source of information on cutting-edge juvenile justice issues and reform trends. On this
website, you can find ready access to reliable, accurate, curated information and analysis on juvenile justice issues; relevant research; best practice models, policy levers for reform, toolkits and action-oriented documents; and experts in the field.
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Mental Health
As Suicides Rise, Insurers Find Ways to Deny Mental Health Coverage: This article is a challenged but important read. The U.S. is in the midst of a mental health crisis. In 2017, 47,000 Americans died by suicide and 70,000 from drug overdoses. And 17.3 million adults suffered at least one major depressive episode. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, a landmark law passed more than a decade ago, requires insurers to provide comparable coverage for mental health and medical treatments. Even so, insurers are denying claims, limiting coverage, and finding other ways to avoid complying with the law.
Read it and weep.
Destigmatizing Mental Health in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities: In this blog post, SAMHSA's Office of Behavioral Health Equity discusses the stigma associated with mental health problems in Asian and Pacific Islander communities and the work of the U.S. Public Health Service's Asian Pacific American Officers Committee and the Cambodian Family organization, which have successfully engaged these communities to learn about mental health.
Find our more.
CMS/SAMHSA Joint Guidance on Addressing Mental Health and Substance Use Issues in Schools: On July 1, CMS and SAMHSA issued a Joint Bulletin with Guidance to States and School Systems on Addressing Mental Health and Substance Use Issues in Schools. The Bulletin contains a great deal of useful information and can be accessed
here.
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Military Families & Youth
School Liaison Officers:
School Liaison Officers (SLOs) are the points of contact on an installation for all things school-related and assist families whose children's education may be affected by military life. They can be a great resource for Parent Centers! Check it out.
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Native American Families & Youth
Social Security Disability Benefits for Alaskan Native and Native Americans: There are some special rules that apply to Social Security and Medicaid for Alaskan Natives and Native Americans.
Find out more.
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Parent/Family Engagement (and Youth!)
Comparing Parents' and Teachers' Rank-Ordered Importance of Early School Readiness Characteristics
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In a study in the Early Childhood Education Journal, researchers examined which characteristics of early school readiness were deemed most and least important according to parents and teachers of 30-42 months old children. Researchers suggest that it is essential to understand what characteristics are most important to parents and teachers in order to be school ready. Findings indicate that teachers and parents agreed upon the relative importance of early school readiness components. For both groups, being healthy, happy, and socially skilled were generally ranked as more important than cognitive abilities in the preschool-aged child. Researchers suggest that children's success is facilitated when parents and teachers share beliefs on which skills children need to successfully transition into the classroom environment. Read it.
Parent-Educator Communication Linked to More Frequent Home Learning Activities for Preschoolers
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In a new study released in Child & Youth Care Forum, researchers examined if parent perceptions of parent-educator communication regarding preschoolers' learning and development are related to the home literacy environment (HLE) and the home numeracy environment (HNE). The research was based on 262 participants from a statewide pre-kindergarten evaluation project aimed at providing early education programming to families with low incomes. Researchers found that that perceptions of parent-educator communication were positively related to the HLE, HNE, and specific learning activities (i.e., naming written letters, identifying letter sounds, reading number books, completing number activity books, learning simple sums, naming written numbers). Researchers suggest that efforts to improve parent-educator communication in this domain may yield benefits for children's learning. They suggest that additional research is necessary to determine whether greater parent-educator communication regarding children's learning and development results in more frequent home learning activities during preschool. Find out more.
"You Have a Status": A Case Study of Parent Leadership in a U.S. School Readiness Initiative
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In a new article in the International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy, researchers conducted a case study that examined an urban school readiness initiative in a northeast United States city that developed parent leadership as a key strategy for increasing the likelihood that all children enter kindergarten ready to succeed. Parent Leaders were primarily immigrant mothers who conducted outreach activities and child developmental screenings with low income, under-served, urban and immigrant families with young children. The researchers investigated what strategies Parent Leaders used to engage families and how their leadership influenced families, neighborhoods, and the Parent Leaders themselves. The researchers report that Parent Leaders used highly relational strategies to engage families and that they also shifted community norms about parent leadership. Finally, they developed their own identities as leaders. Researchers suggest that their findings contribute to an increased understanding of how and why parent leadership matters for school readiness research, practice, and policy, particularly in immigrant and under-served communities. Check it out.
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Parenting
Advancing Research and Measurement on Fathering and Children's Development: From the Society for Research in Child Development: Fathers are more than social accidents. Research had demonstrated that fathers matter to children's development. Despite noted progress, challenges remain on how best to conceptualize and assess fathering and father-child relationships. The current monograph is the result of an SRCD-sponsored meeting of fatherhood scholars brought together to discuss these challenges and make recommendations for best practices for incorporating fathers in studies on parenting and children's development. The first aim of this monograph was to provide a brief update on the current state of research on fathering and to lay out a developmental ecological systems perspective as a conceptual framework for understanding the different spaces fathers inhabit in their children's lives. Because there is a wide variability in fathers' roles, the ecological systems perspective situates fathers, mothers, children, and other caregivers within an evolving network of interrelated social relationships in which children and their parents change over time and space (e.g., residence). The second aim was to present examples of empirical studies conducted by members of the international working group that highlighted different methods, data collection, and statistical analyses used to capture the variability in father-child relationships. The monograph ends with a commentary that elaborates on the ecological systems framework with a discussion of the broader macrosystem and social-contextual influences that impinge on fathers and their children. The collection of articles contributes to research on father-child relationships by advancing theory and presenting varied methods and analysis strategies that assist in understanding the father-child relationship and its impact on child development. Check it out.
Home Learning Activities and Children's Learning Outcomes: A Review of Recent Evidence
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In a new review in the European Journal of Education Studies, researchers examine recent research conducted in many countries that examine the connection between home learning activities and young children's literacy and numeracy skills. The review was based on 66 articles that were selected for the final quality check. Researchers suggest that the more parents interact with their children's learning activities in their early childhood years, the better the children get in literacy and mathematics. They further suggest that parents are the primary architects of a child's experiences through their childcare indoor and outdoor activities. Access the study results.
Supportive Parenting can Reduce Child's Anxiety: This issue of NIH Research Matters highlights studies of interventions designed to promote supportive parenting practices to reduce childhood anxiety.
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Poverty
Economic Instability and Household Chaos Relate to Cortisol for Children in Poverty
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A Journal of Family Psychology study examined the relationship between aspects of economic adversity and cortisol levels (an indicator of stress) in young children. They analyzed variables that represented family income, material hardship, financial strain, economic instability, and household chaos. The study examined 374 children, ages 3-5 years old, who attended Head Start preschool in Philadelphia and their primary caregivers. Almost all the children in this study were from families that were living on less than two times the federal poverty threshold. Researchers found "a statistically significant indirect effect of economic adversity on child cortisol via economic instability and household chaos, as well as statistically significant direct effects of economic instability and chaos on child cortisol, and a significant indirect effect of economic instability on cortisol via household chaos." Read more
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To Thrive, American Children Need a Stronger Safety Net: To close class gaps in opportunity and outcomes, Melissa Kearney, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, argues America needs a new social contract built on a more complete social insurance system for children, improved educational institutions, and stronger families. Check it out.
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Racism
Policies That Dismantle Racism and Sexism in Health Care May Reduce Black Infant and Maternal Mortality
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Another great read from Child Trends - The disproportionately high rates of Black infant and maternal mortality in the United States-compared to rates for non-Hispanic white infants and women-necessitate a systemic and philosophical shift to prioritize Black women's health. Black women have unique health needs resulting from their experiences with both racism and sexism, and their health must be supported holistically-before, during, and after pregnancy-so they and their infants can live full, healthy lives. Find out more.
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Social-Emotional Learning
The Case for School-Based Mindfulness Programs:
We know the world is a stressful placed. Our children deal with tremendous amounts of stress from mental health issues, challenging home environments, food insecurity, peer pressure, test anxiety, fear of failure, the list goes on and on. So what are we doing to help them cope? Where are they learning the skills to deal with life's stressors successfully? Increasingly the answer is in school with Mindfulness programs. Read more.
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Substance Abuse
Food for Thought: A Youth Perspective on Recovery-Oriented Practice: The Mental Health Commission of Canada's (MHCC) Youth Council has created a
video and discussion guide to help service providers understand the needs of youth when it comes to recovery-oriented practice. The Guide breaks down what youth see as some of the core principles of recovery-oriented mental health and addiction services. Using the metaphor of a restaurant interaction between a server and a patron, it provides a light-hearted demonstration of the key concepts of recovery-oriented practice.
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Systems Change and Improvement
"Systems Leaders and Systems Thinkers: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Systems Thinking but Were Afraid to Ask." This session at the National Association for the Education of Young Children Conference provided a primer on systems thinking and systems leadership, and how these concepts apply to early childhood systems.
Check it out.
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Teachers/Teaching
The Effect of Teacher-Child Race/Ethnicity Matching and Classroom Diversity on Children's Socioemotional and Academic Skills
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In a new paper in Child Development, researchers examined effects of teacher-child race/ethnicity matching on teacher-reported child outcomes. How classroom diversity moderated this relationship was also examined. The study was based on a racially/ethnically diverse sample of teachers and children drawn from a professional learning study involving 224 teachers and 5,200 children in 36 New York City elementary schools. Researchers found that teacher-child race/ethnicity matching was associated with higher child engagement in learning, motivation, social skills, and fewer absences. They found that classroom diversity moderated matching such that teacher-child mismatch was related to lower engagement, motivation, social skills, math and reading scores in low-diversity classrooms, but not in high-diversity classrooms. Researchers discuss the implications of their research for practice and policy. Find out more
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Transition to Adult Life/Youth
Focal Point Summer Edition Now Available: The
2019 issue of Focal Point highlights evaluations of transition programs that incorporate innovative approaches to services. Ten articles featuring programs from around the country report successful outcomes from sites using a wide variety of program approaches. The majority of the programs represented are Healthy Transition grantees, and two other innovative practice models are also included.
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Trauma, Toxic Stress, and Resilience
Examining the 8-Year Trajectory of Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in Children Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence
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In the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, researchers examined trajectories of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) over an 8-year period, beginning from the preschool period. They also investigated factors that may be associated with these trajectories, including intervention participation, continued intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure, and the caregiving environment. The research was based on 120 mother-child dyads who participated in four study waves over an 8-year period, beginning when children were between the ages of 4 and 6. Mothers and children participated in an intervention between baseline and Time 2. At the onset of the study, all mothers reported experiencing IPV over the previous year. In general, children experienced worsening of their PTSS over the 8-year trajectory, and few factors were significantly associated with this trajectory. There were no associations between intervention participation, parenting behaviors, and long-term child PTSS outcomes. However, there were significant associations between amount of IPV exposure, mother's level of PTSS, and children's PTSS outcomes. Researchers identified a need for a better understanding of the impact of early-life exposure to IPV, and for interventions tailored to this developmental period. Their findings highlight the long-term negative associations between chronic exposure to IPV and child well-being, and significant connections between caregiver and child mental health. Find out more.
Early Exposure to Neighborhood Crime and Child Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors
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In a recent study in Health & Place, the relationship between exposure to neighborhood crime and child mental health was examined after researchers merged restricted contextual data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with the National Neighborhood Crime Study, a nationally representative neighborhood sample containing tract-level Uniform Crime Report data for large U.S. cities. Researchers examined how objective measures of robbery or burglary rates at or around birth was related to the health and behavior of 566 girls and 646 boys in urban neighborhoods. Researchers found that living in a high crime neighborhood is associated with higher levels of internalizing and externalizing behavior problems for preschool-aged boys and girls. However, these patterns differ for boys and girls and across measures of violent (robbery) and property crime (burglary). For example, girls from high-robbery neighborhoods display more behavior problems than girls from low-robbery neighborhoods and boys from high-robbery neighborhoods have lower internalizing behavior scores than boys from low-robbery neighborhoods. Additionally, girls from high-burglary neighborhoods have higher externalizing scores than girls from low-burglary neighborhoods. Finally, there was no association found between burglaries and externalizing behaviors for boys, the authors of the stud report. Read more.
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ABOUT THE REGION A PARENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE CENTER
The Navigating Excellence-Parent Assistance and Collaboration Team (NE-PACT), the Region A Technical Assistance Center, provides technical assistance to federally-funded parent centers -- Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) and Community Parent Resource Centers (CPRCs) - located in the states of
CT-AFCAMP
,
CT-CPAC
, DC-AJE, DE-PIC, MD-PPMD,
ME-MPF
,
MA-FCSN
,
NH-PIC
,
NJ-SPAN
,
NJ-ASCF
,
NY-AFC
, NY-CIDA, NY-LIAC,
NY-UWS
,
NY-Starbridge
,
NY-INCLUDEnyc
,
NY-Sinergia
,
NY-PNWNY
, PA-HUNE, PA- ME, PA-PEAL, PR-APNI,
RI-RIPIN
, VI-DRVI and
VT-VFN
. These Parent Centers are independent non-profit organizations. We also provide support to emerging parent centers and parent organizations serving families of children with or at risk of being identified as having disabilities. In addition, we work with early intervention and education agencies (local, state and federal level) seeking information regarding best practices in involving parents of children with disabilities in systems improvement.
The center activities are specifically designed to:
- Enhance the capacity of parent centers to provide effective services to families of children with special needs and to work effectively with their states to improve special education and early intervention systems; and,
- Facilitate their connections to the larger technical assistance network that supports research-based training, including educating parents about effective practices that improve results for children with disabilities. For more information click here.
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