Beyond the Grant: How the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Went Beyond Grantmaking to Contribute to a Major Early Childhood Initiative

· The seven-year SPARK (Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids) initiative, created by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF), aimed at systemically linking the pre-K and kindergarten worlds as a way to position vulnerable children for greater success in the early grades. · At the foundation, the initiative served as a departure point for WKKF to move from its traditional grantmaking role to a changemaker role. · To create change, a foundation must articulate – and commit to – a point of view about how change can occur. A theory of change can be a powerful tool to guide ongoing planning and action. · A foundation that intends to create change must be prepared to take responsibility for results and create the internal structures that promote accountability and collaboration. The nature of the SPARK effort called for abandoning the silos of portfolio management and developing a new collaborative approach. · Foundations must be prepared to advocate for change, and bring their visibility, credibility, knowledge, and convening power to it

How the Justice System Responds to Juvenile Victims: A Comprehensive Model.

The justice system handles thousands of cases involving juvenile victims each year. These victims are served by a complex set of agencies and institutions, including police, prosecutors, courts, and child protection agencies. Despite the many cases involving juvenile victims and the structure in place for responding to them, the juvenile victim justice system model presented in this Bulletin is a new concept. Although the juvenile victim justice system has a distinct structure and sequence, its operation is not very well understood. Unlike the more familiar juvenile offender justice system, the juvenile victim justice system has not been conceptualized as a whole or implemented by a common set of statutes. This Bulletin identifies the major elements of the juvenile victim justice system by delineating how cases move through the system. It reviews each step in the case flow process for the child protection and criminal justice systems and describes the interaction of the agencies an individuals involved. Recognizing how the juvenile victim justice system works can inform policy decisions and improve outcomes for juvenile victims. Acknowledging the existence of the system has important implications for system integration, information sharing, and data collection—all of which play a key role in ensuring the safety and well-being of juvenile victims

The Multiple Dimensions of Child Abuse and Neglect: New Insights Into an Old Problem

Outlines the long-term health and cognitive effects and developmental delays that can result from child maltreatment. Makes a case for incorporating child well-being indicators into agencies' databases to monitor and address the needs of at-risk children

Families for Kids: A Powerful Approach to System Reform

Reviews key lessons learned from Kellogg's Families For Kids reform initiative that focused on the development of community models for placing "waiting children" in permanent homes

Housing First in Monterey County

The mission of The Coalition of Homeless Services Providers is to eliminate homelessness in Monterey and San Benito Counties by promoting interagency coordination to develop and sustain a comprehensive system of housing. The Housing Management Information System is the department where the project is implemented. Monterey County has an increasing number of chronically homeless who are suffering from a mental illness and need help. Drug use and lack of specialized services at agencies in Monterey County have contributed to the issue. Local agencies in Monterey County are unequipped to help this rising number of chronically homeless who suffer from a mental illness. The purpose of the project is to research best practices and models from across the country to provide recommendations to the agency to best implement appropriate policies to help this population

Families for Kids: Final Cluster Evaluation Report

Describes the history of Kellogg's Families for Kids initiative, implementation activities carried out by the project sites in eleven states, and prospects for sustaining the changes that were achieved

Influences of School, Classroom, and Teacher Characteristics on Children's School Readiness

A number of factors contribute to the school readiness of children, including child and family characteristics, neighborhood residence, and early care and education experiences. Early skills are the foundation for later school and life success. The current study examines the influence of school composition, classroom quality, and teacher preparation on kindergarten children's school readiness using data originally collected as part of an evaluation of a school readiness intervention. Children's academic school readiness was predicted by teachers' preparation in child development. Children had fewer problem behaviors when their teachers were more highly educated and specialized in child development and, surprisingly, when they attended schools with higher concentrations of low-income students. Child race was the only variable significantly related to children's social skills. These results suggest that teachers play an important role in children's development of foundational skills, and provide support for specific and targeted professional development around early childhood education

Effective workload management in child welfare: Understanding the relationship between caseload and workload

A common assumption in public social service organizations is that workload may be positively associated with caseload. However, few empirical studies have examined what specific characteristics of caseload affect caseworkers' workloads in the child welfare system. This study attempts to address this gap by identifying specific individual and regional factors that influence both subjective and objective dimensions of workloads. Survey data were collected from 1,244 caseworkers at one public child welfare agency in a Midwestern state in the United States. The data indicated that both perceptions of unmanageable workloads and self‐reported overtime work were significantly higher when caseworkers had a greater number of cases than the state caseload standard for the investigations units and worked with at least two different types of cases simultaneously (e.g., working with both investigation and ongoing service cases). Additionally, sufficient staffing numbers to meet caseload demands at the regional level significantly decreased the odds ratio of having to do overtime work. The major findings suggest that the objective and subjective dimensions of workload vary by individual‐ and regional‐level variables. Practice implications are discussed for effective and efficient workload management in the public child welfare system

Protecting the Least of These: A New Approach to Child Pornography Pandering Provisions

The pandering of child pornography - selling, distributing, or conveying the impression that one possesses sexually graphic images of children for sale or distribution - facilitates actual harm to children, such as molestation. Yet legislative attempts to curb pandering inevitably implicate concerns about panderers\u27 First Amendment rights. This Note argues that in balancing the vulnerability of children against the power of the First Amendment, the law must shift to focus more on the subject of this grievous harm - children. This approach will appropriately extend protection to a subset of the population that is least able to protect itself

The Social Construction of Client Participation: The Evolution and Transformation of the Role of Service Recipients in Child Welfare and Mental Disabilities

This article presents a comparative analysis of client participation (CP) in child welfare and mental health and mental retardation systems. It identifies three rationales for client participation (philosophical, pragmatic, and political), along with the limitations surrounding each rationale. It uses social construction theory to examine the historical and ideological underpinnings of organized, institutionally-sanctioned client involvement inside and outside government. In order to enhance the capacity of clients to influence service and benefit systems, their role must evolve through the mutual efforts of government-strengthening client participation policies and independent organizing from the bottom up through community development and advocacy programs