First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

LOVE HER AS SHE IS was featured in a CBC television documentary and is recommended as a valuable resource for all parents and mental health professionals. You will gain insight into the effects of a disturbing childhood, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), FASD, adoption, the world of drugs and life on the street. Through the story of a mother struggling to connect with a distant and dual alcohol and cocaine-addicted daughter, you will discover how to love unconditionally while maintaining clear boundaries, develop healthy solutions for connecting in challenging relationships and turn hope into loving action.

Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Promoting Adolescent Health: A Dialog on Research and Practice is a collection of essays that discusses the insights provided by professionals into the problems of encouraging adolescent health. The book presents the open dialog between the views of pediatrics, cardiologists, psychologists, health educators, sociologists, and nutrition scientists. The text gives discussions from a variety of perspectives on each of six problem areas: smoking, drugs and alcohol, sexuality, coronary risk factors, health-risk eating behaviors, and chronic disease. It also discusses the factors influential in smoking onset and describes the examination of health education and health promotion, adolescent medicine, developmental psychology, education, and research methodology. The book will provide valuable insights for anthropologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, students, and researchers in the field of adolescent behaviors.

Many Americans seem convinced that government programs designed to help the poor have failed. Social Programs That Work shows that this is not true. Many programs have demonstrably improved the lives of people trapped at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. Social Programs That Work provides an in-depth look at some of the nation's best interventions over the past few decades, and considers their potential for national expansion. Examined here are programs designed to improve children's reading skills, curb juvenile delinquency and substance abuse, and move people off welfare into the workforce. Each contributor discusses the design and implementation of a particular program, and assesses how well particular goals were met. Among the critical issues addressed: Are good results permanent, or do they fade over time? Can they be replicated successfully under varied conditions? Are programs cost effective, and if so are the benefits seen immediately or only over the long term? How can public support be garnered for a large upfront investment whose returns may not be apparent for years? Some programs discussed in this volume were implemented only on a small, experimental scale, prompting discussion of their viability at the national level. An important concern for social policy is whether one-shot programs can lead to permanent results. Early interventions may be extremely effective at reducing future criminal behavior, as shown by the results of the High/Scope Perry preschool program. Evidence from the Life Skills Training Program suggests that a combination of initial intervention and occasional booster sessions can be an inexpensive and successful approach to reducing adolescent substance abuse. Social Programs That Work also acknowledges that simply placing welfare recipients in jobs isn't enough; they will also need long-term support to maintain those jobs. The successes and failures of social policy over the last thirty-five years have given us valuable feedback about the design of successful social policy. Social Programs That Work represents a landmark attempt to use social science criteria to identify and strengthen the programs most likely to make a real difference in addressing the nation's social ills.