This working paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explains how adult-child relationships shape child development, and identifies ways to strengthen policies that affect those relationships in the early childhood years.

This article discusses the importance of safety and stability to healthy child development and reviews the research on the risks associated with maltreatment and the foster care experience in the United States.

An executive summary of lessons learned on preventing family separation in poverty stricken communities. Brief case studies from Guatemala, Haiti, Philippines, United States and Burkina Faso.

A list of US programs and program approaches that influence family reunification outcomes. Relevant for social workers, policy-makers, and others involved in foster care, after care, and family reunification.

Analyzing rich data from in-depth ethnographic interviews conducted in Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, Next Generation researchers documented the challenges that low-income families face as they patch together a variety of arrangements to meet their child care needs.

This paper provides guidelines and tools for policy makers to evaluate the quality of child care initiatives

Adapting placement services to the needs of kinship care providers is the focus of this article.

A review of institutional care and family-centered care with a discussion of both positive and negative aspects of group care. This review paper is primarily focused on showing the inefficacy of group care and recommending other forms of care such as kinship care and even foster care as options that are more cost effective and better for children’s development.

This article, a chapter from the book Family Foster Care in the Next Century, describes several innovative types of shared family care arrangements that demonstrate promise in the protection of children and the promotion of family well-being.

The central theme of this volume is accountability for outcomes, certainly a current driving force in child welfare as well as in other public and private service fields.