Browsing by Subject "Children and Families"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Building Community Support for Young Children With Autism
    (2018-08) Stronach, Sheri
    "Early intervention is key," says Sheri Stronach, an assistant professor in the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the University of Minnesota, who researches early identification of autism spectrum disorder in children. Early detection can have a positive impact on intervention, and Stronach has shown that autism can be reliably diagnosed in children as young as 18 to 24 months. Her current research examines the impacts of autism interventions in six communities around Minnesota: four in the Twin Cites and two outside of the metro area. When conducting this kind of community impact research on autism, she notes, it is important to develop trusting relationships with community members. This can help researchers navigate cultural barriers and stigma among families and health care providers.
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    Coordinated Education Programs for Children and Parents
    (2018-06) Eckrich Sommer, Teresa
    "One of the biggest determinants of the outcomes of any individual is their level of education and income," says Teresa Eckrich Sommer, a research associate professor at Northwestern University. Unlike many human services programs that treat each member of a household individually, Sommer's research is focused on designing programs for families. This "two-generation" approach aims to improve human capital outcomes for parents and children simultaneously. Sommer's current research pairs career support and workforce training for parents of low-income households with high-quality early education programs for their children through Head Start. "This kind of work tells us that you can really create changes within how services are delivered and that you can better coordinate and align them in ways that serve the interests of parents and children at the same time. And we know that is critically important to improving family wellbeing," she says.
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    Engaging Dads in Family Programs
    (2018-08) Fabiano, Gregory
    "We were running parenting programs, and dads weren't showing up for them," says Gregory Fabiano, a professor of counseling at the University at Buffalo. Fabiano is an expert on evaluating and treating attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other disruptive behavior disorders in children and teens. In this video, Fabiano discusses the importance to designing support programs for children that actively engage parents — and how he and colleagues created an innovative sports little league program to increase the participation of dads.
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    Gage East: Using Developmental Evaluation to Support Innovation in Housing Services
    (2017) Sandfort, Jodi; Sarode, Trupti
    When a community wants to develop new services for homeless youth and young families, what is really involved? Olmsted County and Center City Housing Corporation set out to fully explore this question as collaborators. Beginning in 2012, they identified the necessary components to a successful service: who to serve, where the housing services will be, how it will be funded over time, and who else would be good partners in this effort. Yet, to do this effectively, there were many questions yet to be answered that required a collaborative, continuous approach. The Future Services Institute (FSI) at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs worked with Olmsted County Community Services, Center City Housing Corporation and other partners, using a developmental evaluation design to help them frame the project, track its development, identify issues as they surface, and test quick iterations in problem solving.
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    Improving Children’s Access to Mental Health Care
    (2018-10) Lingras, Katherine
    Katherine Lingras, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, specializes in early childhood mental health. Her research is focused on making mental health care more accessible in early childhood and bridging gaps between academic research and practice. In this video, Lingras shares insights from a recent study that integrated mental health services–specifically screening for social and emotional development—into a pediatric clinic.
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    Navigating Work-Life Conflict
    (2018-02) Oelberger, Carrie
    In this video Carrie Oelberger, assistant professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, discusses work-life conflict and the challenge of navigating the boundaries between our personal and work lives. "The more meaningful someone finds their work, the harder it will be for them to erect those boundaries," she says. Rather than placing the burden solely on individuals, Oelberger argues that employers have a responsibility to encourage healthy work practices—especially if there's an existing organizational culture that encourages over-work. "If we're retaining workers that are deeply personally discontented then that has really negative outcomes both for the workers and for the organizations."
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    Training Developing Brains to Regulate Stress
    (2018-08) Pakulak, Eric
    Eric Pakulak, acting director of the Brain Development Lab at the University of Oregon, is using neuroscience research to develop more effective family-based training programs for young children and parents. Our work is "providing evidence at the level of brain mechanisms for the effects of poverty on the developing brain, but I think more importantly, what we can do about it and how we can use this evidence to design and implement effective programs for families," he says. To better understand how poverty and environmental stress impact school readiness in preschool-aged children, Pakulak uses a technique called electrophysiology to measure the ability of children's brains to focus on certain stimuli and ignore others. This skill, called sustained selective attention, is especially important for classroom environments.