'Should my baby be talking by now?' 'Why hasn't he started feeding himself yet?' Anxious parents the world over ask themselves these same questions. A recent survey by the Social Issues Research Centre revealed that three-quarters of parents wanted more guidance on whether their babies' cognitive skills were above or below average. In response to this, leading psychologist Dr Dorothy Einon, has devised a test that will enable you to address these and many other developmental concerns. Simple, observational tests, conducted at home, will help you to monitor your baby's physical, cognitive and social development and compare him to the average baby of his age. You can chart yout baby's growth rate; test his senses and mobility; find out what he can understand, remember and recognise, as well as learn how he perceives the world. Dr Einon provides fascinating insight into the mind of a baby and gently reminds parents that while some babies do develop at an exceptional rate, all babies are different and those with lower scores have plenty of time to catch up with their peers.

Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.

This CD-Rom is part of the Ages & Stages Questionnaires (ASQ), a flexible, culturally sensitive system for screening infants and young children for developmental delays or concerns in the crucial first 5 years of life. The CD-Rom includes all 19 questionnaires and scoring sheets translated into Spanish, plus a Spanish translation of the intervention activity sheets found in The ASQ User's Guide. Each questionnaire covers 5 key developmental areas: communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal-social. Users can print an unlimited number of forms in PDF format. Some restrictions apply; ASQ is a registered trademark of Brookes Publishing Co.

Infancy is one of the most fascinating periods in the human life cycle. In two short years, infants become thinking, speaking, social beings. As this book explains, over the past three decades, researchers and clinicians have developed an array of assessment methods for measuring infant development and diagnosing infants with developmental delays.The field of infant assessment has broadened from a major focus on cognitive development to an emphasis on parent-infant interaction, play assessment, and newer strategies that involve naturalistic observations. Because of the need to look at the whole infant, assessment often involves multiple disciplines. The interdisciplinary approach measures the infant domains of motor skills, cognitive abilities, and language acquisition and evaluates the infant's psychosocial environment.The chapters in this volume provide a solid overview of the current trends in infant assessment measures and procedures. The book can be used in undergraduate and graduate infant development courses and for advanced courses in infant assessment.

When children and adults apply for disability benefits and claim that a visual impairment has limited their ability to function, the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) is required to determine their eligibility. To ensure that these determinations are made fairly and consistently, SSA has developed criteria for eligibility and a process for assessing each claimant against the criteria. Visual Impairments: Determining Eligibility for Social Security Benefits examines SSA's methods of determining disability for people with visual impairments, recommends changes that could be made now to improve the process and the outcomes, and identifies research needed to develop improved methods for the future. The report assesses tests of visual function, including visual acuity and visual fields whether visual impairments could be measured directly through visual task performance or other means of assessing disability. These other means include job analysis databases, which include information on the importance of vision to job tasks or skills, and measures of health-related quality of life, which take a person-centered approach to assessing visual function testing of infants and children, which differs in important ways from standard adult tests.