Supporting Low-Income Parents of Young Children: The Palm Beach County Family Study

Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. 1313 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. Tel: 773-753-5900; Fax: 773-753-5940; Web site: http://www.chapinhall.org

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School Readiness; Early Intervention; Child Abuse; Pregnancy; Counties; Low Income Groups; Young Children; Family Programs; Prevention; Child Development; Child Health; Child Welfare; At Risk Persons; Adolescents; Early Parenthood; Crime; Social Services; Longitudinal Studies; Individual Characteristics; Family Characteristics; Parenting Styles; Child Rearing; Parent Participation; Child Care; Community Programs; Program Effectiveness; Delivery Systems; Trend Analysis; Barriers; Access to Health Care; Welfare Services; Housing; Depression (Psychology); Stress Variables

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For more than a decade, Florida's Palm Beach County has been building an infrastructure of prevention and early intervention services to promote and support the healthy development and school readiness of children from birth to age 8. The county began this effort with a set of programs focused on serving families in four targeted geographic areas that have high levels of risk for poverty, teen pregnancy, crime, and child maltreatment. The Children's Services Council of Palm Beach County commissioned Chapin Hall to conduct a multiyear evaluation of how families use and are affected by this system of services. The 2009 report presents findings from the third year of the study, conducted when the focal child was between 24 and 30 months old, and compares findings from the first and second year of the evaluation. The report details opportunities and challenges for Palm Beach County's broad-based effort, and suggests that flexibly designed services that can adapt to families' routines and values are more likely to be used, and would therefore provide greater stability to families' lives. (A bibliography is included. Four appendices are included: (1) Longitudinal Study Sample and Methods; (2) Sample Characteristics by Maternal Nativity; (3) Reported Service Providers at Year 3; and (4) Child Maltreatment Rates in Palm Beach County 2004-2006. Contains 16 footnotes, 10 figures and 115 tables.)

As Provided

2009

ED504250