Aimed at providing a foundation for increasing the quantity and quality of physical and mental health care for children, this book describes the latest research and theories about family, school, and community prevention and health-promotion programs to improve the health status of children during the next decade. This impressive group of researchers examine such pertinent questions as: + Why do problem behaviors occur together (like substance abuse, delinquency, and school failure)? And, to what extent can common strategies prevent each of these difficulties? + Are we effectively using what we know to prevent drug use among children? + What strategies are the most promising for preventing unwanted pregnancy and AIDS? + Does violent/aggressive behavior result from unmet developmental needs? + What programs have been most effective in preventing depression and suicide in young people? + Are there reliable prevention strategies that can reproduce the risk of unintentional injury among children? This thought-provoking book identifies innovative and empirically based preventive and health-promotion strategies that schools and communities may implement to enhance childrenAEs social, emotional, and physical wellness and thus will be interest to professionals and practitioners in the fields of developmental psychology, clinical psychology, family studies, social work, counseling, human services, nursing, and public health.

TodayAEs young people face greater risks to their current and future health and social development as shown by the involvement of younger and younger children in smoking, drinking, gang membership, and acts of violence. Emphasizing developmentally and contextually appropriate prevention service delivery models, the authors of this volume identify state-of-the-art, empirically based strategies to strengthen the environments in which children develop. Since programs with strong conceptualization, design, and implementation have the potential to enhance childrenAEs social, emotional, and physical wellness, the authors first review ways to strengthen the family, child-care systems, early childhood education, school-based health and mental health services, and community-based mental health programming. They next explore the importance of theory-guided evaluation to clarify the process of program implementation as well as highlighting strategies for disseminating programs effectively. Throughout the chapters, the authors emphasize three themes: One, that scientists, practitioners, and policy makers must collaborate to diversify the portfolio of coordinated family-, school-, and community-based prevention services. Second, that rigorous evaluations of prevention programs are critical to document their efficacy and to identify ways to improve their quality. And, three, that well-designed prevention programs must be effectively conducted in order to insure implementation quality. This important new volume will be invaluable to professionals and practitioners in the fields of developmental psychology, clinical psychology, family studies, social work, counseling, human services, nursing, and public health.

Aimed at providing a foundation for increasing the quantity and quality of physical and mental health care for children, this book describes the latest research and theories about family, school, and community prevention and health-promotion programs to improve the health status of children during the next decade. This impressive group of researchers examine such pertinent questions as: + Why do problem behaviors occur together (like substance abuse, delinquency, and school failure)? And, to what extent can common strategies prevent each of these difficulties? + Are we effectively using what we know to prevent drug use among children? + What strategies are the most promising for preventing unwanted pregnancy and AIDS? + Does violent/aggressive behavior result from unmet developmental needs? + What programs have been most effective in preventing depression and suicide in young people? + Are there reliable prevention strategies that can reproduce the risk of unintentional injury among children? This thought-provoking book identifies innovative and empirically based preventive and health-promotion strategies that schools and communities may implement to enhance childrenAEs social, emotional, and physical wellness and thus will be interest to professionals and practitioners in the fields of developmental psychology, clinical psychology, family studies, social work, counseling, human services, nursing, and public health.

Currently, only about 50% of American youths live in traditional two-parent, first-marriage families. This fact, combined with often bleak economic and social realities, creates the backdrop of interactions between families, children, and schools are examined in this probing volume. Answering a need for evaluative research in this area of increasing public interest, the contributors build a model for evaluation, focusing on the dynamics of family-school connections. How is school achievement influenced by parent-child interactions and the family environment? How do school, family, community, and peer-group connections affect early adolescents? What is the family's role in the success of learning-disabled youth or in school truancy? What effect does parental discord and divorce have on a child's learning? These questions, as well as proposals for intervention and prevention, create the crux of this book designed to inform and motivate readers to respond to one of our country's most fundamental social concerns. Vital reading for everyone who wants to better understand child-school-community interaction, this book especially warrants reading by students, researchers, and other professionals in developmental psychology, family studies, psychology, and social work. "The book should be read by professionals who have contact with schools as part of their brief; by those educators who train the new generation of social workers, psychologists, and teachers; and by researchers who seek to understand the tapestry of social influences on children's development. The book is worth buying alone for the fruits of great scholarship evident in the extensive lists of up-to-date references at the end of each chapter, and in a superb appendix that offers a tour de force of a 19-page bibliography on the topic." --Child and Family Social Work

Currently, only about 50% of American youths live in traditional two-parent, first-marriage families. This fact, combined with often bleak economic and social realities, creates the backdrop of interactions between families, children, and schools are examined in this probing volume. Answering a need for evaluative research in this area of increasing public interest, the contributors build a model for evaluation, focusing on the dynamics of family-school connections. How is school achievement influenced by parent-child interactions and the family environment? How do school, family, community, and peer-group connections affect early adolescents? What is the family's role in the success of learning-disabled youth or in school truancy? What effect does parental discord and divorce have on a child's learning? These questions, as well as proposals for intervention and prevention, create the crux of this book designed to inform and motivate readers to respond to one of our country's most fundamental social concerns. Vital reading for everyone who wants to better understand child-school-community interaction, this book especially warrants reading by students, researchers, and other professionals in developmental psychology, family studies, psychology, and social work. "The book should be read by professionals who have contact with schools as part of their brief; by those educators who train the new generation of social workers, psychologists, and teachers; and by researchers who seek to understand the tapestry of social influences on children's development. The book is worth buying alone for the fruits of great scholarship evident in the extensive lists of up-to-date references at the end of each chapter, and in a superb appendix that offers a tour de force of a 19-page bibliography on the topic." --Child and Family Social Work