Growing together: expanding roles for social work practice in early childhood settings

In the United States, interest in early childhood development has grown dramatically over the past two decades and continues to expand. Increasing public support for programs and services that address the needs of young children and their families provides numerous opportunities for social work intervention. This article describes three major early childhood systems—early intervention, Early Head Start, and early care and education—and discusses ways that social workers can strengthen programs within these systems and improve outcomes for participating children and families. Social workers' understanding of and commitment to family-centered practice and cultural competence are highlighted. Opportunities for social workers to become involved in advocating for, developing, and leading high-quality early childhood programs and implications for social work education are also discussed.Accepted manuscrip

The experiences of early childhood development home visitors in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa

BACKGROUND This article examines the development of early childhood development (ECD) home-visiting services in South Africa. AIM To examine the factors that could support the success of home-visiting programmes as well as to explore the experiences of bachelor’s-level home visitors rendering such services. SETTING This study was conducted in the Eastern Cape, a highly impoverished area of South Africa. METHODS It begins with a discussion of the emergence of home-visiting as a strategy for the delivery of ECD services in South Africa and a review of the literature on ECD home-visiting, particularly with highly vulnerable, impoverished families. Next a focus group conducted with a small sample of home visitors as part of a multi-faceted community assessment is described. The results are examined within the context of challenges facing this particular part of South Africa and the nation as a whole. RESULTS Four themes emerged as most prominent: (1) encountering the effects of extreme family poverty, (2) identifying high rates and multiple aspects of child maltreatment, (3) encountering scarce resources in high-need areas and (4) finding rewards and maintaining a desire to continue serving challenging populations. CONCLUSION This study provides a unique window on the challenges that ECD home visitors are likely to encounter when working with families living in extreme poverty, the resourcefulness that home visitors often demonstrate and the rewards to be found in this work.Published versio

Top Quark Measurements at the Fermilab Tevatron

The top quark, discovered at the Tevatron in 1995, is a very interesting particle. Precise measurement of the top properties using large data samples will allow stringent tests of the Standard Model and offer a unique window on new physics. In this report will be reviewed the status of the current knowledge of the top quark as provided by the Run I results of the CDF and D0 experiment. A first look at various preliminary measurements obtained with data collected during Run II will be also presented.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures Proceeding of Lepton-Photon 2003, Fermilab Batavia (IL), August 200

Genuine lab experiences for students in resource constrained environments: The RealLab with integrated intelligent assessment.

Laboratory activities are indispensable for developing engineering skills. Computer Aided Learning (CAL) tools can be used to enhance laboratory learning in various ways, the latest approach being the virtual laboratory technique that emulates traditional laboratory processes. This new approach makes it possible to give students complete and genuine laboratory experiences in situations constrained by limited resources in the provision of laboratory facilities and infrastructure and/or where there is need for laboratory education, for large classes, with only one laboratory stand. This may especially be the case in countries in transition. Most existing virtual laboratories are not available for purchase. Where they are, they may not be cost friendly for resource constrained environments. Also, most do not integrate any form of assessment structure. In this paper, we present a very cost friendly virtual laboratory solution for genuine laboratory experiences in resource constrained environments, with integrated intelligent assessment