Research Areas
Child Welfare
The Heller School has a long history of significant research on child welfare, starting with David Gil's groundbreaking 1970 study, Violence against Children - Physical Child Abuse in the United States. More recently, studies about the welfare of young children were stimulated by the landmark report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development, edited by former Heller School dean Jack Shonkoff. ICYFP's Massachusetts Early Childhood Linkage Initiative (MECLI) implemented one of the report's recommendations by assisting child welfare agencies in Massachusetts with the referral to early intervention services of children under the age of three who had been abused or neglected. ICYFP is actively disseminating the results of its study of the process and outcomes of the referrals.
Two ICYFP faculty members are currently involved in a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development-funded study of child health with an emphasis on racial disparities in low birth weight and other child health indicators. The Community Child Health Network involves five sites and will follow new mothers for several years.
Other projects in the child welfare field have included:
- An evaluation of the Family Recovery Project, a program of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health addressed to mothers with substance abuse problems (funded by the Children's Bureau through MDPH)
- An evaluation of A Helping Hand: Mother to Mother, another program of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health focusing on newborns exposed to substance abuse (funded by the federal Children's Bureau through MDPH)
- An evaluation of Partners for Success, a program designed to increase the capacity of the Worcester, MA, elementary schools to ensure that all students, including those with severe and chronic emotional and behavioral challenges, are successful learners (funded by the federal Department of Education)
- A study of the benenfits to children of referrals from the child welfare system to Early Intervention Services (funded by the Mailman Foundation)
- An evaluation of Connecting Families, a child abuse prevention program conducted by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (funded by MSPCC)
- A study of a child abuse prevention program in several Catholic parishes (funded by the Archdiocese of Boston)