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Early Childhood Measures
Profiles, 2004.
As part of ASPE's ongoing support for federal collaboration on early childhood
research through the Science and Ecology of Early Development (SEED) initiative,
ASPE and the Administration for Children, Youth, and Families (ACYF) contracted
with Child Trends to develop profiles of early childhood measures. This project
produced a compendium of early childhood assessments commonly used to measure
domains of development, including language and literacy, cognition, mathematics,
social-emotional competency, and approaches to learning. Various types of
ongoing observational assessments were also included. A profile of each
assessment includes the purpose of the measure, key constructs, administration,
and reliability information. These profiles were developed as a resource
for a workshop funded by ASPE, ACYF, and the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development, designed to bring together a multidisciplinary
group of experts to advise the federal partners on the measurement and assessment
of learning and development in early childhood. This compendium was not intended
to be an exhaustive inventory of measures, nor an endorsement of particular
approaches to measurement, rather, the purpose was to provide information
on the current state of the field in the assessment of child outcomes,
particularly in large-scale and intervention studies.
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State-Funded Pre-Kindergarten:
What the Evidence Shows, December 2003.
This paper examines the role that states play in providing early childhood
education. It reviews evidence on states' level of support for pre-kindergarten
programs, the quality and effectiveness of state-funded pre-kindergarten,
and state efforts to build integrated, comprehensive, early childhood systems
for children from birth through age five that have a focus on school readiness.
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Strengthening Head Start: What
the Evidence Shows, June 2003.
This paper describes the limited educational progress for children in Head
Start and the problems resulting from a fragmented approach to early childhood
programs and services. The paper also presents evidence from early childhood
research and documents state efforts that have successfully addressed these
problems. Finally, the paper explains the President’s proposal for Head
Start reauthorization, which builds on the evidence to strengthen the program
and, through coordination, improve preschool programs in general to help
ensure that children are prepared to succeed in school.
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Advancing States’ Child Indicators
Initiatives, May 2002.
This project promoted state efforts to develop and monitor indicators of
the health and well-being of children and helped to institutionalize the
use of indicator data in state and local policy work. Partnerships of state
government agencies with responsibilities for addressing children’s
issues were invited to apply for grants. At a minimum, the partnerships were
to include the agencies with lead responsibilities for children’s programs,
including children’s health programs, and the welfare and income support
programs. Grants were awarded to thirteen states: Alaska, Delaware, Florida,
Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, Utah,
Vermont and West Virginia. An additional state, California, was added with
the support of the Packard Foundation. The Chapin Hall Center for Children
provided technical assistance to the states.
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13 Indicators of Quality Child Care: Research
Update, April 2002.
This research update synthesizes literature around the health and safety
standards for out-of-home child care. The report uses 13 indicators of health
and safety for quality child care, such as staff training, child:staff ratio,
immunizations, emergency planning, etc, and examines existing evidence to
support how these 13 indicators protect children from harm. The report, a
collaboration with the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, was prepared by
the National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child Care at the
University of Colorado and written by Richard Fiene, Pennsylvania State
University.
Pamphlet: A Parent's Guide to Choosing
Safe and Healthy Child Care (HTML version). For printing, the
PDF version.
-
The Economic Rationale for Investing in Children:
A Focus on Child Care, December 2001.
This report summarizes a conference held to discuss the economic rationale
for investing in child care. The report includes three commissioned papers
discussing economic rationale for investments in other areas (health, education,
and training), and how these rationale might be relevant for child care as
well. The papers are by Robinson G.
Hollister, Steven G. Rivkin,
and Janet Currie.
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Child Care Quality: Does It Matter and Does
It Need to be Improved? May 2000.
This report reviews evidence about the role of quality child care in children's
development, and provides an economic rationale for government investment
and intervention to improve the quality of nonparental child care. The authors
examine the quality of child care currently and suggest ways to improve
it. Deborah Vandell and Barbara Wolfe of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison prepared the report for ASPE.
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Access
to Child Care for Low-Income Working Families, 1999.
This report provides new information on the number of children receiving
subsidies through the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) in fiscal year 1998
and on the number of children eligible for assistance, by state. The
Administration for Children and Families
(ACF) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
(ASPE) prepared the report using administrative data reported to HHS's Child
Care Bureau and eligibility estimates generated by the Urban Institute's
TRIM3 microsimulation model.
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State Child Care Reports, December
1999.
These state reports are companion documents to the above national report
and use the same methods. They summarize recent child care subsidy,
affordability, and supply information for:
California,
Connecticut,
Delaware,
Florida,
Louisiana,
Michigan,
Pennsylvania,
Texas, and
Utah. The state reports were
drawn from state administrative data reported to the Child Care Bureau of
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and state and local
data collected by the Urban Institute during the summer of 1999 under contract
with HHS. (These reports are also available in PDF format for
printing: California (PDF),
Connecticut (PDF),
Delaware (PDF),
Florida (PDF),
Louisiana (PDF),
Michigan (PDF),
Pennsylvania (PDF),
Texas (PDF), and
Utah (PDF).)
-
Inventory of Child Care Research, November
1999.
This table describes the current and recently completed child care research
conducted by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
(ASPE), the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), the National
Institute for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the Office
of the Inspector General (OIG). Also available in a format for printing,
ccresinv.pdf, (PDF format).
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-
State Innovations in Child Welfare
Financing, April 2002.
This report describes how states are implementing fiscal reforms to contain
costs or improve the performance of their child welfare systems. 23
initiatives in 22 states are described. The report also identifies
issues that the implementation of fiscal reforms face and describes how well
fiscal reforms appear to be working. Many of these reforms are based
on the managed care model used in medicine for the past 30 years, while other
reforms use approaches such as the privatization of services, performance
contracting, and integrated funding. Prepared by Westat and Chapin
Hall, the report concludes by identifying several challenges faced by fiscal
reform initiatives that must be solved if they are to be implemented widely.
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National Study of Child Protective Services
Systems and Reform Efforts web site.
The purpose of this 2-year study was to describe the current status of the
Child Protective Services (CPS) system in the United States and reform efforts
underway around the nation to improve its operation. The study focused
on the following areas: state and local child protective services mandates
and policies; child protective services agency functions and practices that
are conducted in order to meet those mandates and policies; and innovative
reform efforts that are being introduced and their impact on agency functions
and practices. See the web site
for reports on the five main components of the National Study.
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Fathers’ Involvement in Permanency
Planning and Child Welfare Casework (August 2002)
This review summarizes existing literature and knowledge about non-custodial
fathers and their relations with children involved in the child welfare
system. It sets the stage for a three-year study that will provide
the federal government with a description of the extent to which child welfare
agencies identify, locate and involve non-custodial fathers in case decision
making and permanency planning. The literature review is organized
according to the following questions: What are the recent policy trends
in children’s family living arrangements and what has been the policy
response to these trends? What are the barriers to father involvement
in case planning? What are the potential effects of father involvement
in case planning? What promising practices are currently being implemented
to identify, locate and involve non-custodial fathers in child welfare cases?
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Issue Papers on Foster Care and
Adoption web site.
During 2001 and 2002, several data analyses on foster care and adoption issues
were conducted for ASPE using the Multi-State, Foster Care Data Archive
maintained by the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of
Chicago. The web site contains an overview and the reports.
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Assessing the Field of Post-Adoption
Services: Family Needs, Program Models, and Evaluation Issues
web site.
This project explored the service needs of families following the adoption
of a child from the public child welfare system and assessed the “state
of the art” in the current array of post adoption services. The project
drew from existing research, analysis of national and/or multi-state data,
and visits to existing programs. Finally, it suggested an agenda for future
federal research on these issues, particularly as they arise from the Adoption
and Safe Families Act (ASFA). The web site contains an overview and the reports.
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Evaluation of Family Preservation and Reunification
Programs web site.
Conducted from 1994 through 2002, this project rigorously evaluated programs
to prevent the placement of children in foster care when it can be avoided.
Other products include an evaluation of efforts to reunify families who had
at least one child placed in foster care and issue papers on family preservation,
fiscal reform, and cost estimation. The web site contains an overview, the
reports, and related links.
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Employment Outcomes for Youth Aging Out
of Foster Care, March 2002.
Youth who have aged out of foster care and lack the social and financial
support of their families are at significant risk of poor outcomes. Previous
research, based primarily on interviews with former foster care youth, have
shown that many find it difficult to maintain stable employment and that
their earnings are low. This study uses state administrative data to examine
these issues for former foster care youth in Wisconsin. Employment, earnings,
and public assistance receipt are analyzed for youth who exited out of home
care between January 1, 1992 and December 31, 1998 and were at least 17 years
old at the time of their exit.
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Assessing the Context of Permanency and
Reunification in the Foster Care System, December 2001.
Improving the permanency of living arrangements for children in the child
welfare system has been a central focus of federal and state policy for the
past two decades. Reunification, however, remains the initial goal for nearly
all the children who enter the foster care system. This report presents six
papers that together provide a description of current reunification efforts
in the foster care system and assess the status of reunification in permanency
policy and practice. The first paper,
Permanency: A Balancing
Act, presents a framework for thinking about permanency and explores
the status of reunification within the permanency continuum. The
Evaluation of Programs for
Permanency and Reunification expands on the first paper and reviews
what must be learned to develop more effective programs for achieving permanency.
Reunification from Foster Care
in Nine States: 1990-1997 presents analyses using the Multistate
Foster Care Data Archive to describe the basic structure of the exit processes
from foster care. Secondary analyses based on data from the 1994 National
Study of Protective, Preventive, and Reunification Services Delivered to
Children and Their Families is the basis of the fourth paper,
The Role of Race in Parental
Reunification. The fifth paper,
Caseworker Decision
Making, examines the reunification decision making process and those
factors that are considered by caseworkers and staff in determining whether
to work toward reunification. The last paper,
Permanency and Reunification
Trends in 25 States, provides an overview of the types of efforts
(services and programs) provided at the state and local level to improve
reunification of children.
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On Their Own Terms: Supporting Kinship Care
Outside of TANF and Foster Care, September 2001.
An increasing number of states and counties are concluding that neither their
TANF program nor foster care are suited to serve children being raised by
relatives, and are setting up alternative program options specifically intended
for these families. Such programs are a new innovation and little is currently
known about them. This report examines a number of such programs to inform
policy officials about this new program direction, present its implications
for the federal TANF and foster care programs, and provide program models
and information for state and local officials who may be considering establishing
such programs in their communities.
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Assessing the Field of Post-Adoption Service:
Family Needs, Program Models, and Evaluation Issues:
Literature Review, April 2001.
This literature review, part of a larger project, describes information available
from reports and the professional literature regarding three questions that
are the focus of the overall project: (1) What is the extent of need
for post-adoption services and supports? (2) What are the characteristics
of existing post-adoption services programs? and (3) How are post-adoption
services programs monitoring and assessing their effectiveness? The literature
review includes a discussion of the challenges to designing and evaluating
post adoption services and supports that will provide guidance for subsequent
activities within the assessment, including secondary data analysis and case
studies of existing programs.
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Self-Sufficiency of Former Foster Youth in
Wisconsin: Analysis of Unemployment Insurance Wage Data and Public
Assistance Data, December 2000
Youth who have aged out of foster care and lack the social and financial
support of their families are at significant risk of poor outcomes. Previous
research, based primarily on interviews with former foster care youth, have
shown that many find it difficult to maintain stable employment and that
their earnings are low. This study uses state administrative data to examine
these issues for former foster care youth in Wisconsin. Employment, earnings,
and public assistance receipt are analyzed for youth who exited out of home
care between January 1, 1992 and December 31, 1998 and were at least 17 years
old at the time of their exit.
-
Health Care Conditions, Utilization, and
Expenditures of Children in Foster Care, Sept. 2000
Many children in foster care have physical, emotional, or developmental problems,
sometimes resulting from the abuse or neglect they have suffered. Yet
there have been ongoing concerns about the adequacy of the health care services
they receive. This study uses State Medicaid Research Files (built
from Medicaid eligibility and claims records) to study the health care services
delivered to children in foster care in three states (California, Florida,
and Pennsylvania) during a two-year period in the mid-1990s. Mathematica
Policy Research prepared the report.
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Report to Congress on Kinship Foster Care, Executive
Summary, June 2000
The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 directed the Secretary of HHS
to develop this report to Congress. This report was prepared with the
input of the Advisory Panel on Kinship Care which met in October 1998 and
January 1999. The report has two parts. Part I reviews the academic
and related research literature on kinship care, including what is known
about current practices in the use of relatives as foster parents.
Part II is the Secretary's Report to Congress, which presents the Department's
conclusions and recommendations based on the Advisory Panel's input, on internal
deliberations, and on available research and data. In requesting this
report, the Congress asked for information on a variety of topics including
state practices, policies, and costs for services to families in which a
relative cares for a child in state custody, as well as family characteristics
and conditions that lead to relative foster care placements. Note that
the Executive Summary includes information only on the research review and
does not summarize the Secretary's Report. The
full report in PDF format (681KB) is available.
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Blending Perspectives and Building Common
Ground: Report to Congress on Substance Abuse and Child
Protection, April 1999.
This report was requested by Congress in the Adoption and Safe Families Act
of 1997. As directed, it describes (1) the extent and scope of the problem
of substance abuse in the child welfare population; (2) the types of services
provided to these clients; (3) what is known about the effectiveness of services;
and (4) recommendations for moving the field forward to better serve families
affected by both child maltreatment and substance abuse. Although intended
for Congress, the report is also useful for state, local, and national policy
makers concerned with the interrelationships between substance abuse and
child maltreatment.
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Formal and Informal Kinship Care, Executive
Summary, June 1997
A small, but significant, number of children are now being raised by relatives
other than their parents, but little is known about these families.
Some of these “kinship care” situations have been arranged formally,
through child welfare agencies, but far more are informal arrangements organized
by the families themselves. This study uses several data sources, including
the Current Population Survey, the 1990 U.S. Census, and several states’
administrative data regarding their foster care and welfare programs, to
examine the characteristics of informal kinship care arrangements and, where
possible, to compare them with those initiated through and/or subsidized
by the child welfare system. The study was conducted by Allen Harden
of the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago and Rebecca
Clark and Karen Maguire of The Urban Institute, under contract to the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary
for Planning and Evaluation. The Executive
Summary and full report are available
or you may download the report as a compressed, self-extracting file
(kincare.exe, 520Kb).
(The report consists of WordPerfect 6.0® text, Excel® tables, and
GIF graphic figures.)
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Efforts by Child Welfare Agencies to Address
Domestic Violence: The Experiences of Five Communities, March,
1997. (An Executive Summary is also
available.)
This report, by Laudan Y. Aron and Krista K. Olson of the Urban Institute,
focuses on recent efforts by child welfare agencies to take account of battering
experienced by mothers in cases of child abuse and neglect. These efforts
are in their infancy. The oldest of them, in Massachusetts, dates back
about six years, while others are more recent. The study documents
what child welfare agencies in five state and local communities (San Diego
County, the Hilo District of Hawaii County, Hawaii, the Massachusetts Department
of Social Services, the Oregon Department of Human Services, and Families
First of Michigan) are doing to integrate domestic violence concerns into
their agency routines, and to identify and highlight issues that a child
welfare agency might consider before proceeding with similar efforts.
This report presents few answers or “best practices”; instead,
it focuses on raising issues that seem critical for child welfare agencies
to consider as they make changes to address domestic violence among families
in their caseloads. You may download a copy of the full report in
WordPerfect® format as a compressed, self-extracting file
(cwsdv.exe 153Kb).
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-
Evaluation of Abstinence Education Programs Funded
Under Title V, Section 510: Interim Report. April 2002
This report presents early implementation and operational findings of an
evaluation of abstinence education programs funded through Title V Section
510 of the Social Security Act. The report highlights the range of abstinence
education programs that are operating, and provides detailed implementation
information on 11 programs that were selected to be in the evaluation. This
is the first formal report of the evaluation; a short-term impact report
will be completed in early 2003 and the final impact report will be completed
in summer 2005. The evaluation is being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research,
Inc.
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The Long Term Impact of Adolescent
Risky Behaviors and Family Environment. August 2001
This report analyzes whether adolescent risk taking behavior has negative
consequences for long-term adult outcomes, and the degree to which family
structure of the adolescent may help to mitigate those consequences. Risk
taking behaviors that were examined include measures of sexual activity,
substance abuse and delinquent behavior. Adult outcomes include measures
of education, employment, family formation, substance abuse and incarceration.
The analysis, by NORC, was performed using data from the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79).
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Second Chance Homes: Providing Services
for Teenage Parents and Their Children. October 2000
The difficult life circumstances of most teenage mothers and their children
have intensified interest in ways to support young mothers to become
self-sufficient, delay subsequent childbearing, and promote awareness of
child development early in their children's lives to break the cycle of poverty
and reliance on welfare. One innovative service delivery option is
"Second Chance Homes" for teenage mothers and their children. Second
Chance Homes offer stable housing and other supportive services to teenage
mothers, to provide them with the skills and knowledge necessary to become
more effective parents and lead productive, independent lives. This
paper describes Second Chance Homes and what decision makers at the state
and local level need to consider as they start or implement such a program,
including issues regarding service delivery, effectiveness, and challenges
to rigorous evaluation.
-
Second Chance
Homes. October 2000
This brochure was jointly prepared by the Departments of Health and Human
Services and Housing and Urban Development (HHS/HUD) and briefly describes
Second Chance Homes — adult-supervised, supportive group homes
or apartment clusters for teen mothers and their children. Included
is a chart detailing information on major sources of Federal funding available
from HHS and HUD to help state and local governments and community-based
organizations create Second Chance Homes.
-
The 1999-2000 Annual Report to Congress on
Teen Pregnancy Prevention. A National Strategy to Prevent
Teen Pregnancy.
In the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of
1996, requires HHS to develop a National Strategy to address the serious
challenge of Teen Pregnancy and to assure that at least 25 percent of communities
in this country have teen pregnancy prevention programs in place. The
Department released a National Strategy to Prevent
Teen Pregnancy in January of 1997. This is our third Report to
the Congress on the National Strategy to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
Earlier Reports:
-
Get Organized: A Guide to Preventing
Teen Pregnancy, September 1999.
An easy-to-use tookit for those people at the state and local levels trying
to prevent teen pregnancy in their communities. Includes strategies
for collecting data, practical advice on raising money, conducting evaluations,
and examples from promising programs. Written by the National Campaign
to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
-
Positive Youth Development in the United
States: Research Findings on Evaluations of Positive Youth Development
Programs, June 1999.
This report examines existing evaluations of positive youth development programs
and summarizes the state of the field. The report, also known as, the
Positive Youth Development Project, is by Richard Catalano, Lisa Berglund,
Jeanne Ryan, Heather Lonczak, and David Hawkins of the Social Development
Research Group of the University of Washington.
-
Adolescent Decision Making: Implications
for Prevention Programs, A Workshop, 1999.
This report summarizes the discussions held at the workshop of January
6 – 7, 1998, and provides an brief overview of decision theory
and how decision theory might be applied to adolescent behavior. It
considers cognitive, social, affective, and institutional factors that may
influence effective decision making. The role of the media is briefly
explored, followed by information on several youth development and prevention
programs. Finally, the report summarizes issues raised throughout the
workshop that might be important to the design and implementaion of programs
for youth.
-
Building and Sustaining Community
Partnerships for Teen Pregnancy Prevention: A Working Paper,
June 1998.
This working paper reviews an extensive literature of various partnership
relationships designed to produce change in a range of topical areas.
Many of the problems addressed were associated with teenage risk-taking
behaviors. The examination considered research in the fields of violence
prevention, substance abuse prevention, teenage pregnancy prevention, youth
development, community development, environmental protection, and general
business enterprises. The report provides an overview of the literature
on partnerships and informs the development of future community partnerships
to prevent teen pregnancy.
-
Teenage Parent Demonstration and Evaluation
web site, November 1998.
This web site contains an overview of the demonstration and evaluation and
many of the major reports on this large project. Involving almost 6,000
teenage parents on welfare, this three-year demonstration examined promising
approaches to increasing self-sufficiency among these clients. The
reports cover the impact results for the two year and six year follow-ups;
design and implementation issues; child care needs and use; case management;
cost effectiveness; impacts on children; teenage pregnancy; and many other
topics of this large-scale, long-term project.
-
Sources of Support for Young Latina
Mothers, Executive Summary, August 1995.
This report explores the support strategies used by young Latina mothers
in the United States. It focuses on Latina mothers because they have
high rates of poverty and their numbers are growing rapidly. There
has been limited research on the circumstances of young Latina mothers and
even less on Latina subgroups. The report also includes information
on young White and Black mothers. The authors used data from the 1990
Census to 1) look at the young mother’s living arrangements to determine
whether she is living with others who can potentially provide support to
her and her children, and 2) consider how young mothers support themselves
and their children, both through employment and public assistance.
This information is provided for young mothers ages 15-19 and 20-24 and by
ethnicity and nativity. The report was produced by Joan Kahn and Rosalind
Berkowitz of the Urban Institute under contract with the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning
and Evaluation. The WordPerfect® 5.1 files comprising the full
text of this report are available as
latina.zip, a compressed
(.zip) file.
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-
Dynamics of Children's Movement Among the AFDC,
Medicaid, and Foster Care Programs Prior to Welfare Reform:
1995-1996, March 2000.
Substantial changes have occurred in many state social services and health
programs in the past several years and while research is underway examining
the effects of these changes individually, few studies look at the
interrelationships between programs and the changes over time in clients'
utilization of multiple programs. This report looks at clients' movement
between three programs — AFDC, Medicaid, and Foster Care —
in the years immediately preceding federal welfare reform. The study
uses administrative data from California, Illinois, and North Carolina, to
examine transitions — moving from one program to another or leaving
the welfare system entirely. It provides an initial look at the patterns
of children's movement among these programs in the pre-welfare reform period
and will provide a point of comparison with data about such movement following
the program changes.
-
Enhancing the Well-Being of Young
Children and Families in the Context of Welfare Reform:
Lessons from Early Childhood, TANF, and Family Support Programs, June
1999.
By Jane Knitzer and Nacy Cauthen, in collaboration with Ellen Kisker.
(Available in PDF format only.)
-
See also: child outcomes
study from NEWWS evaluation.
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