Developing Child and Family

Director: Martha Edwards, PhD

The Center received, in partnership with Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, a grant of $140,000 from the Office of Head Start. The grant will enable the Center to bring Bright Beginnings and Personal Best, the parenting curricula developed by the Center’s Director, Martha Edwards, and Associate Director, Judy Grossman, to Kingsbridge’s Early Head Start.

Not only will staff be trained to offer Bright Beginnings (for parents with their infants and toddlers) and Personal Best (an adult development curricula for parents only) to the 40 families in their “Baby School” program, Center faculty Yolanda Martinez and Barbara Russek will provide intensive on-site coaching to all staff to bring the principles of these curricula into home visits with families and to staff in 16 family day care programs serving 100 families. Providing high quality day care is essential for the health and well-being of young children, and we are excited to work with Kingsbridge to develop a training and coaching model that supports the development of committed and skilled day care providers.

After taking some time to re-group and mourn the loss of its creator, Marcia Stern, the Competent Kids/Caring Communities (CKCC) program at the Institute’s Center for the Developing Child and Family is up and running again in an exciting, new, expanded format. CKCC is an integration of Marcia Stern’s classroom-based social-emotional curriculum for elementary school children and the work of the Institute’s Family-School Collaboration Project – a hugely successful program founded by Howard Weiss and Arthur Maslow that brought families and schools together to support children’s education.

CKCC has formed a partnership with Mott Haven Academy Charter School, an innovative school dedicated to working with at-risk children in the child welfare system. Mott Haven is itself a partnership with NY Foundling Hospital and opened its doors in the Fall of 2008 in the South Bronx. Zina Rutkin and Fran Schwartz are taking the lead in this effort. They are consulting to teachers who are implementing the CKCC classroom curriculum that adds to the traditional R’s”— Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic—five additional “R’s”—Respect for self and others, Reflective abilities, Regulation of the self, Relationships with teachers, peers, and parents, and Responsibility-taking, to achieve academic and social success. And they are consulting to teachers on developing collaborative activities that bring families, school staff, and students together to support educational goals.

The Center for the Developing Child and Family supports the relational development of children and parents in the context of their families and larger systems. It embraces the whole family, working with both mothers and fathers in interaction with their children. The Center has a number of projects to meet the needs of families with children from birth through elementary school.

The major initiatives include:

Community based prevention programs for at risk families:

• Bright Beginnings - a manualized curriculum for pregnant women and parents and children together
• Personal Best - a manualized curriculum for parents with young children

Parent education presentations and discussion groups:

• Parent Education Network

School-based curriculum for teachers to promote children’s social-emotional development within the classroom:

• Competent Kids/Caring Classrooms

Training programs to enhance the capacity of therapists, agencies and school personnel to provide family centered, culturally sensitive and developmentally appropriate services:

• Training Programs
  

Director: Martha Edwards, PhD

Bright Beginnings is a theoretically based intervention for families making the transition to parenthood, consisting of group discussions and parent-child activities. Developed by Dr. Martha Edwards, it is designed to help parents promote their children’s social and emotional development and school readiness through a curriculum that includes a prenatal component for expectant mothers, a group component for parents with their infant or toddler, a home visiting component, a father’s component and a sibling component.

Prenatal Component
The prenatal component consists of six sessions of discussion and activities for expectant mothers. The focus is on developing a bond with their unborn child and both receiving and providing support to other women in the same stage of life. The prenatal component may also include couple sessions with expectant fathers.

The Parent-Child Group Component
The parent-child group component consists of five six-session cycles of groups that parents attend with their child from two months to 30 months. The sessions are carefully structured around a theme (e.g., Learning about the world; Learning to communicate; Playing is learning; Guiding children’s behavior). The sessions include in-depth discussion about the theme and application of these ideas to parent-child interactive activities.

Home Visiting Component
Home visits are implemented to reinforce the Bright Beginnings objectives between cycles and to individualize the program for each family. Home visits take place during the prenatal component and in between Bright Beginning’s parent-child group cycles.

Father's Component
The father's component is founded on the importance of father involvement and effective co-parenting for good child outcomes. Fathers are encouraged to attend Bright Beginnings sessions with their partners. Depending on availability, a 10-week discussion group is offered for those fathers who wish to explore their parenting role, beliefs and practices. Another option for father involvement is multiple couple groups that are offered before and after the birth of the baby to strengthen the co-parenting relationship and marital satisfaction.

Sibling Component
The sibling component provides a supervised, developmentally appropriate play experience for preschool-aged children who accompany their parent(s) and younger sibling to Bright Beginnings. The play experiences are designed to promote social and emotional development and school readiness. It also provides an opportunity to identify children who may need a referral to determine eligibility for early intervention or preschool special education services. This component supports the family focus of the BB Program.

Bright Beginnings is currently being implemented in four sites:

Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, Bushwick, Brooklyn, through a generous grant from the Robin Hood Foundation.

University Settlement House, Early Head Start Program, Lower East Side, Manhattan, through a generous grant from the Robin Hood Foundation.

Child Center of New York, Early Head Start Program, Queens.

Kingsbridge Heights Community Center, Early Head Start Program, Bronx.

For more information, contact:
Brenda Nikelsberg
212 879-4900, ext 108
bnikelsberg@ackerman.org

Director: Judy Grossman, DrPh, OTR

The Mother’s Club (Personal Best) opened me up. We all had a lot in common—a lot of stress, children, husbands, life in general. I looked forward to it every week.” 
—Head Start mother

“The group was about my personal growth and not about school, about my parenting. . . It was an affirmation of what was already inside us instead of, we are going to teach you to be good moms because you don’t know what you are doing.”
—Head Start mother

Personal Best was developed by Dr. Judy Grossman to promote maternal mental health, social support and perceived self-efficacy in the parental role. The curriculum supports a two generation approach to service delivery that focuses on adult development in addition to child development and the parent-child relationship.

Personal Best is a 16-week group experience that includes discussion, activities, and personal reflection to improve a mother’s adaptive coping skills and role performance in multiple domains (parent, partner, family member, homemaker, worker, community member). A core feature is the process of building resilience and personal growth through graded mastery experiences and mutual support.

Bringing schools and families together to support children’s success

What is Competent Kids, Caring Communities (CKCC)?
Competent Kids Caring Communities (CKCC) is an exciting program that helps schools build a strong social and emotional support system for student learning. The program provides schools with two essential ingredients for academic success: tools to teach social emotional competencies and strategies to involve parents directly in their children's learning.

How does Competent Kids, Caring Communities help educators?
It provides them with the tools to:

• Increase Student Attention
  
• Address Specific Problems of Individual Children
  
• Prepare Students for Key Academic Transitions
  
• Clarify & Bridge Cultural Differences
  
• Minimize Student Referrals for Special Ed Services
  
• Prevent Holdovers
  
• Improve Student Behavior
  
• Manage Stress & Decrease Test Anxiety

CKCC is a multi-level, evidence based intervention that complies with Response to Intervention (RTI) standards of high quality and cultural and linguistic responsiveness. It can be used as a primary preventive program, as well as an intervention technique at the secondary and tertiary levels.

How does CKCC work with schools?
CKCC will work with your school to assess strengths and challenges, develop strategic plans to enhance strengths and work on challenges and provide relevant tools, training and consultation to school staff. CKCC is flexible and can be adapted to your school’s needs; we can work with your school on a per diem basis for professional development or through comprehensive program implementation with a yearly contract.

What research is there to support CKCC’s focus on teaching social-emotional skills to improve academic performance?
In controlled studies, research has shown:

Students can be taught skills which enable them to take responsibility for their own learning. (e.g. Levine, M.D. (2002). A Mind at a time. NY: Simon & Schuster.)

Students who take responsibility for their own learning are more likely to attend school and be motivated to achieve. (e.g. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. NY: W.H. Freeman.)

Motivation and engagement insure school success. (e.g. DiPerna, J.C. (2002). Promoting academic enablers to improve student achievement: An introduction to the mini-series. School Psychology Review, 31 (3), 293-297.)

Attendance improves significantly for students in social-emotional learning programs. (e.g. Zins, J. E., Weissberg, R. P., Wang, M. C., & Walberg. H. J. (Eds.) (2004). Building academic success on social and emotional learning: What does the research say? New York: Teachers College Press.)

Problem–solving and coping skills contribute to school performance. (e.g. Elias, M.J., Clabby, J.F. (1992). Building Social Problem-Solving Skills: Guidelines from a School-Based Program). Michigan: Jossey-Bass.)

What research is there to support CKCC’s focus on building a positive school community climate to improve academic performance?
In controlled studies, research has shown:

Social-emotional learning programs help to create a school culture of caring, kindness, and hope. (e.g. CASEL: Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (2003). www.casel.org.)

Students are more engaged in learning when they feel connected to their teacher and their classroom environment. (e.g. Elias, M.J., Beier, JJ, & Gara, M.A. (1989). Children’s responses to interpersonal obstacles as a predictor of social competence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 18(5), 451-465.)

Children do better in school when parents are actively involved in their education, and when home and school work together. (e.g. Christenson, S.L. & Sheridan, S.M. (2001). School and families: Creating essential connections for learning. New York: The Guilford Press.)

To learn more about CKCC contact Dr. Zina Rutkin, Director CKCC at zinarutkin@gmail.com

Upcoming Presentations

Too Safe for Their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Children and Teens Thrive
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Michael Unger, Ph.D.

For more information contact:
Brenda Nikelsberg, MSW, Center Administrator
bnikelsberg@ackerman.org
212-879-4900 x108

The Center offers workshops and semester courses for persons who wish to specialize in early childhood development and parenting processes. The courses focus on child development, parent development, context, and the parent-child relationship. There are also intensive courses and agency-specific training for persons to become qualified to implement the Bright Beginnings and/or Personal Best Programs in their agencies.

Bright Beginnings and Personal Best Summer Intensive: Early Childhood Development and Parenting Processes
July 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 2012, 9:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Martha Edwards, Ph.D., Judy Grossman DrPH, OTR

For more information, contact:
Brenda Nikelsberg, MSW
212 879-4900, ext 108
bnikelsberg@ackerman.org