Early childhood is considered a critical but often vulnerable period in a child’s development where early identification and intervention can be crucial for improving children’s developmental outcomes. Systems and family-centred perspectives are vital to support families and build their capacities to lead normalized lives with improved family quality of life. This book explores the family-centred practices and systems factors which influence families’ experiences raising children with complex needs. It also considers the ways in which professionals can work with families to build and support parent and child competence. Conceptual and practical work from Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States present descriptions of and implications for different family system frameworks and early-childhood programs. Contributors in this edited volume bring together contemporary information that bridges the research to practice gap in supporting families of young children with disabilities or delays. Chapters include: Early Intervention for Young Children with Developmental Delays: Contributions of the Developmental Systems Approach Family Composition and Family Needs in Australia: What Makes a Family? Working with Families in Early Childhood Intervention: Family-Centred Practices in an Individualised Funding Landscape Family Systems and Family-Centred Intervention Practices in Portugal and Spain: Iberian Reflections on Early Childhood Intervention This book will attract the attention scholars of Parenting and Families; Child Development and Childcare.

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

Using a risk and resilience orientation, Intervention with Children and Adolescents distills evidence-based studies into practice guidelines for designing and implementing interventions across a wide range of social and health problems in childhood and adolescence. Leading scholars from nearly two dozen fields of practice share their wisdom as they critically review literatures in child maltreatment, youth violence, drug abuse, school dropout, pregnancy, serious mental disorders, gang involvement, and other areas of practice. This book is distinguished by detailed interdisciplinary perspective reviews on the impact of culture, gender, sexual orientation, and poverty on child development and developmental pyschopathology. This is a path-finding book for practitioners, students, parents, and scholars. It is compelling reading on how we can change systems and services to make positive changes in child outcomes. Intervention is grounded in the latest data on prevalence, theories, empirical evidence on intervention, factors/conditions that protect and/or increase risk for negative outcomes, and social/cultural factors unique to various racial and ethnic groups. Case illustrations, additional reading lists, charts/tables on various interventions, and practice guidelines set this book apart from other literature in this area.

Chapters on choosing an effective treatment discuss how to evaluate claims about treatments for autism, and what the research says about early behavioral intervention and other treatments. Subsequent sections address what to teach, teaching programs, how to teach, and who should teach. Also addressed are the organization and funding of a behavioral program, working with a speech-language pathologist, and working with the schools. Answers to commonly asked questions are presented along with case histories. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Rich with case material and artwork samples, this volume demonstrates a range of creative approaches for facilitating children's emotional reparation and recovery from trauma. Contributors include experienced practitioners of play, art, music, movement and drama therapies, bibliotherapy, and integrative therapies, who describe step-by-step strategies for working with individual children, families, and groups. The case-based format makes the book especially practical and user-friendly. Specific types of stressful experiences addressed include parental loss, child abuse, accidents, family violence, bullying, and mass trauma. Broader approaches to promoting resilience and preventing posttraumatic problems in children at risk are also presented.

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.

The definitive guide to routines-based early intervention--straight from the leading authority on this highly respected, family-centered model. Includes step-by-step guidance on each part of the model, plus more than 25 photocopiable checklists to