Jane Knitzer

Welfare reform, family support, and child development: perspectives from policy analysis and developmental psychopathology.

This article explores the implications of recent welfare-related policy change for the well-being of children in low-income families, and for research investigating child development processes and outcomes. It provides an overview of current welfare-related policies and explores the implications for developmental researchers. The article also synthesizes early findings from research, highlighting both overall impacts and the more nuanced evidence that while families are transitioning off welfare, only a small number are transitioning out of poverty, and a subgroup of families at risk are not faring well. It then examines, from a theoretical and methodological framework, what developmental psychopathology might bring to the study of welfare-related impacts on children in the context of this complex and changing policy landscape, and what welfare researchers might bring to the field of developmental psychopathology. The article concludes with broad recommendations for both research and policy.

Children's rights in the family and society: dilemmas and realities

This paper seeks to examine and place in perspective recent legal activities on behalf of children, focusing both on efforts to define, expand, and clarify the rights of children and parents as family members, and on efforts to enforce the obligations of broader social institutions, such as education and child welfare, to children and their families.

Map and Track: State Initiatives for Young Children and Families. 2000 Edition.

University, with core support from the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Centers mission is to identify and promote strategies that prevent child poverty in the United States and that improve the lives of low-income children and their families. NCCP places a special emphasis on preventing or alleviating poverty among children under age six because young child poverty poses particularly serious risks to childrens healthy growth and development. NCCP: • Conducts sound research to identify and promote wise investments in low-income families that have important long-term benefits for children, families, their communities, their states, and the nation as a whole. • Employs a multidisciplinary approach to build bridges between academic research, field-based knowledge of the experiences of low-income families raising children, attitudinal research, and the development of public and private sector initiatives for low-income families with children. • Works to accurately, effectively, clearly, and broadly communicate its research in compelling ways and to synthesize relevant research to meet the needs of key audiences that work on issues affecting low-income families. • Helps key stakeholders and the general public understand and effectively respond to the constantly changing face of child poverty. NCCP does this by assessing and tracking: the definition and measurement of child poverty; the impact of child poverty on various sub-populations; the effects of particular policies on low-income families and children; and public attitudes and awareness regarding child poverty, low-income families, and related issues. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Map and Track 2000 could not have been produced without the assistance of countless others. We extend our gratitude to the 300 public officials who took the time to provide us with detailed information about their states efforts to improve the well-being of young children and families. We also thank the following individuals for their guidance and feedback as we designed and conceptualized the project: consultant. And we gratefully acknowledge the following organizations on whose data we relied to examine state efforts to promote family economic security: Center on Budget and Among our colleagues at NCCP, special thanks go to Kinsey Dinan, who contributed to the data analysis and writing for this report. We also thank others at NCCP for valuable contributions to the project: In addition, we deeply appreciate the dedicated efforts of NCCPs communications and production team, led by She also directs research on vulnerable families experiencing multiple stresses and on childrens mental health.