Africa's Future, Africa's Challenge compiles the latest data and viewpoints on the state of Sub-Saharan Africa's children. Topics covered include the rationale for investing in young children, policy ...trends in early childhood development (ECD), historical perspectives of ECD in Sub-Saharan Africa including indigenous approaches, new threats from HIV/AIDS, and the importance of fathers in children's lives. The book also addresses policy development and ECD implementation issues; presents the ECD programming experience in several countries, highlighting best practices and challenges; and evaluates the impact of ECD programs in a number of countries.
This book provides an account of the experience of a multifaceted system change programme to strengthen the capacity of Ireland's statutory child protection and welfare agency in the areas of ...prevention, early intervention and family support.
Many jurisdictions globally are involved in system change processes focused on increasing investment in services that seek to prevent children's entry into child protection and welfare systems, through early intervention, greater support to families and an increased emphasis on rights and participation. Based on a four-year in-depth study by a team of university-based researchers, this text adds to the emerging knowledge base on developing, implementing and evaluating system change in child protection and welfare. Study methodological approaches were wide-ranging and involved a number of key stakeholders, including children, parents, social workers and social care workers, service managers, agency leaders and policymakers. Since the change process involved an agency-university partnership encompassing design, technical support and evaluation, the book also contributes to understanding of the potential and limits of such partnerships in the child protection and welfare field. Uniquely, the book gives voice to the experience of both agency personnel and academic researchers in the accounts provided.
It will be of interest to all scholars, students and practitioners in the areas of child protection and welfare.
Early child development in china Wu, Kin Bing; Young, Mary Eming; Cai, Jianhua
2012., 2012, 07-06-2012, 2012-07-06, 2014-05-14
eBook, Book
Open access
In the past 30 years, China has reached the target of lifting 500 million people out of poverty. The rate of increase in human development indicators has become the second fastest in the world, ...allowing China to enter the ranks of middle-income countries. As the most populous country, accounting for one- fifth of the world's population, its transformation has been unprecedented in human history. Scientific evidence and international experience in the past 10 years have found that early child development (ECD) is key to human development, as it lays the foundation for the rest of life. Early child development includes physical, psychological, emotional, language, behavioral, and social development. Experience in the early years of life will determine healthy development and happiness in the rest of life. Research has found that investment in ECD is the most cost effective strategy to improve human development. In China's demographic transition, the population of children and youth is declining in absolute numbers, and the investment of raising them can increase on a per capita basis. This study has been in the making since 2009. It was prepared during a time when China was charting its course of development under the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). The study began with an agreement between the World Bank and China's National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) for a collaborative study on ECD. Concurrently, China's Ministry of Education invited the World Bank to conduct an overall review of the education sector, in order to provide it with inputs and suggestions as it prepared China's national plan for medium- and long-term education reform and development (2010-2020). In reviewing achievements and challenges in the education sector, the Bank found that there was much room for expanding and improving preprimary education for children ages 3-6. The Ministry of Education appreciated the Bank's identification of this need and set ambitious goals for preprimary education in the national education plan.
Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Waldfogel, Jane; Craigie, Terry-Ann; Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne
The Future of children,
09/2010, Volume:
20, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Jane Waldfogel, Terry-Ann Craigie, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn review recent studies that use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS) to examine why children who grow up in ...single-mother and cohabiting families fare worse than children born into married-couple households. They also present findings from their own new research. Analysts have investigated five key pathways through which family structure might influence child well-being: parental resources, parental mental health, parental relationship quality, parenting quality, and father involvement. It is also important to consider the role of the selection of different types of men and women into different family types, as well as family stability. But analysts remain uncertain how each of these elements shapes children's outcomes. In addition to providing an overview of findings from other studies using FFCWS, Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn report their own estimates of the effect of a consistently defined set of family structure and stability categories on cognitive, behavioral, and health outcomes of children in the FFCWS study at age five. The authors find that the links between fragile families and child outcomes are not uniform. Family instability, for example, seems to matter more than family structure for cognitive and health outcomes, whereas growing up with a single mother (whether that family structure is stable or unstable over time) seems to matter more than instability for behavior problems. Overall, their results are consistent with other research findings that children raised by stable single or cohabiting parents are at less risk than those raised by unstable single or cohabiting parents. The authors conclude by pointing to three types of policy reforms that could improve outcomes for children. The first is to reduce the share of children growing up in fragile families (for example, through reducing the rate of unwed births or promoting family stability among unwed parents). The second is to address the pathways that place such children at risk (for example, through boosting resources in single-parent homes or fostering father involvement in fragile families). The third is to address directly the risks these children face (for example, through high-quality early childhood education or home-visiting policies).
This review was prepared jointly by the World Bank Group and the World Food Programme (WFP), building on the comparative advantages of both organizations. It examines the evidence base for school ...feeding programs with the objective of better understanding how to develop and implement effective school feeding programs in two contexts: a productive safety net, as part of the response to the social shocks of the global food, fuel and financial crises, and a fiscally sustainable investment in human capital, as part of long-term global efforts to achieve Education for All and provide social protection to the poor.
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 book aims to fill gaps in existing knowledge about early childhood development (ECD) efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean by reviewing a selection of ECD programs in the region, including ...those in early childhood education, health, and nutrition, and distilling lessons related to their design, implementation, and institutionalization. The book surveys existing evidence on the impact of programs worldwide that provide support to children during the period before birth through age six, including programs in developed and developing nations. It presents a compelling evidence-based argument for greater investment in ECD programs in Latin America and the Caribbean, while highlighting the need for both more rigorous evaluations and more accurate cost accounting of such programs. Improved evaluations and cost tracking will generate better data on how to effectively design, fund, and provide quality ECD programs to all children in the region, especially those from low-income families.
There has been considerable research and authorship on child sexual abuse; however, much of this research has focused on adult perpetrators and child victims. Less attention has been paid to ...children’s harmful sexual behaviour and the multitude of influences.
Harmful Sexual Behaviour in Young Children and Pre-Teens provides evidence-based understanding on typical sexual development versus harmful sexual behaviour; the prevalence and impacts associated with harmful sexual behaviour; Australian laws, policies, and educator responsibilities; responses and support systems for children who display harmful sexual behaviour; and the implications and challenges for future practice. This book provides understandings that directly respond to the recent Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommendation 10.1 to address (a) primary prevention strategies to educate family, community members, carers, and professionals about preventing harmful sexual behaviours, (b) secondary prevention strategies to ensure early intervention when harmful sexual behaviours are developing, and (c) tertiary intervention strategies to address harmful sexual behaviours.
The authors present a review of psychological, sociological, legal, and educational research to inform and support professionals involved in the wellbeing and education of children to understand, manage, and reduce harmful sexual development in children.
Young children who have experienced early adversity are at risk for developing disorganized attachments. The efficacy of Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), an intervention targeting ...nurturing care among parents identified as being at risk for neglecting their young children, was evaluated through a randomized clinical trial. Attachment quality was assessed in the Strange Situation for 120 children between 11.7 and 31.9 months of age (M = 19.1, SD = 5.5). Children in the ABC intervention showed significantly lower rates of disorganized attachment (32%) and higher rates of secure attachment (52%) relative to the control intervention (57% and 33%, respectively). These results support the efficacy of the ABC intervention in enhancing attachment quality among parents at high risk for maltreatment.
The studies reported here aimed to test the proposal that mind-mindedness is a quality of personal relationships by assessing mind-mindedness in caregiver-child dyads in which the relationship has ...not spanned the child's life or in which the relationship has been judged dysfunctional. Studies 1 and 2 investigated differences in mind-mindedness between adoptive parents (ns = 89, 36) and biological parents from the general population (ns = 54, 114). Both studies found lower mind-mindedness in adoptive compared with biological parents. The results of Study 2 showed that this group difference was independent of parental mental health and could not fully be explained in terms of children's behavioral difficulties. Study 3 investigated differences in mind-mindedness in foster carers (n = 122), parents whose children had been the subject of a child protection plan (n = 172), and a community sample of biological parents (n = 128). The level of mind-mindedness in foster carers and parents who were involved with child protection services was identical and lower than that in the community sample; children's behavioral difficulties could not account for the difference between the 2 groups of biological parents. In all 3 studies, nonbiological carers' tendency to describe their children with reference to preadoption or placement experiences was negatively related to mind-mindedness. These findings are in line with mind-mindedness being a relational construct.
PDF
