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Early childhood intervention is particularly cost-beneficial when it reduces justice involvement, but ingredients that contribute to this outcome are unknown. The goal of this study was to estimate the effects of two common early childhood intervention ingredients--home visits and center-based education--on juvenile justice involvement. The Infant Health and Development Program (IHDP) randomized 1090 premature and low-birth-weight babies to intervention or control groups. Intervention group families were offered home visits from birth to age 3 years and high-quality center-based early childhood education from ages 1 to 3 years, but varied in their take-up of each intervention component. We estimated (1) intent-to-treat effects and (2) the effects of families' level of participation in each intervention component, using a novel stratification approach to minimize the impact of self-selection bias on dosage. Outcomes were children's risk of being stopped by police, arrested, or incarcerated, by age 18 years. Intent-to-treat analyses showed no effects of the IHDP for both sexes combined, nor for girls only, on any of the three outcomes, but there was an intent-to-treat effect on boys' risk of being arrested, OR = 0.43 (95% CI 0.24, 0.76). Analyses of dosage effects showed that, for both sexes combined, participation in the center-based educational component decreased the odds of being stopped by the police by 3% for each month of services. For boys only, the odds of being arrested decreased by 4% with each month of home visits and by 4% with each month of center-based educational services. We conclude that high-quality center-based early childhood education and, to some extent, home visits, reduce justice involvement among biologically vulnerable children, especially boys.

The association between prenatal stress and children's socioemotional development is well established. The COVID‐19 pandemic has been a particularly stressful period, which may impact the gestational environment. However, most studies to‐date have examined prenatal stress at a single time point, potentially masking the natural variation in stress that occurs over time, especially during a time as uncertain as the pandemic. This study leveraged dense ecological momentary assessments from a prenatal randomized control trial to examine patterns of prenatal stress over a 14‐week period (up to four assessments/day) in a U.S. sample of 72 mothers and infants. We first examined whether varied features of stress exposure (lability, mean, and baseline stress) differed depending on whether mothers reported on their stress before or during the pandemic. We next examined which features of stress were associated with 3‐month‐old infants' negative affect. We did not find differences in stress patterns before and during the pandemic. However, greater stress lability, accounting for baseline and mean stress, was associated with higher infant negative affect. These findings suggest that pathways from prenatal stress exposure to infant socioemotional development are complex, and close attention to stress patterns over time will be important for explicating these pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young children can experience violence directly or indirectly in the home, with some children exposed to multiple forms of violence. These polyvictims often experience violence that is severe, chronic, and multifaceted. The current study used latent class analysis to identify and examine the pattern of profiles of exposure to family violence (i.e., violence directed towards the child and between caregivers) among a sample of 474 children ages 3-6 year who were drawn from the Multidimensional Assessment of Preschoolers Study (Wakschlag et al., 2014). The data yielded 3 classes: a polyvictimized class (n = 72; 15.2%) with high probability of exposure to all forms of violence, a harsh parenting class (n = 235; 49.5%), distinguished mainly by child-directed physical discipline in the absence of more severe forms of violence, and a low-exposure class (n = 167; 35.2%). Classes were differentiated by contextual factors, maternal characteristics, and mother-reported and observational indicators of parenting and child functioning with most effect sizes between medium and large. These findings add to emerging evidence linking polyvictimization to impaired caregiving and adverse psychological outcomes for children and offer important insight for prevention and intervention for this vulnerable population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nurse‐Family Partnership® (NFP) is an evidence‐based home‐visiting program for low‐income, first‐time mothers. NFP® has demonstrated benefits for reducing child maltreatment and improving parenting, child development and families' economic self‐sufficiency. It is now implemented widely in the US where, despite the use of home visits, which generally reduce barriers to program participation, only 35% of clients nationwide complete the 2.5‐year program. This concurrent mixed‐methods study was conducted in 2013 in an urban northeastern US NFP site and included administrative program data, surveys (n = 56), in‐depth interviews (n = 14) with nurse home visitors, and focus groups with nurse supervisors (n = 13). We explored associations between nurses' attrition rates and their perspectives on client attrition and retention strategies. We further conducted an inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data. Findings indicate that nurses' attrition rates were not significantly associated with their views and strategies to retain clients. Nurses and supervisors noted that clients' competing priorities and 'chaotic lives' primarily explained attrition. They thought that clients often left the program upon receiving enough information and skills or achieving key milestones, which may reflect reaching a saturation point, albeit prior to the full completion of the program. We offer recommendations to assess performance based on client accomplishments rather than whether they participated until the prescribed endpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nurse-Family Partnership ® (NFP) is an evidence-based home-visiting program for low-income, first-time mothers. NFP ® has demonstrated benefits for reducing child maltreatment and improving parenting, child development and families' economic self-sufficiency. It is now implemented widely in the US where, despite the use of home visits, which generally reduce barriers to program participation, only 35% of clients nationwide complete the 2.5-year program. This concurrent mixed-methods study was conducted in 2013 in an urban northeastern US NFP site and included administrative program data, surveys (n = 56), in-depth interviews (n = 14) with nurse home visitors, and focus groups with nurse supervisors (n = 13). We explored associations between nurses' attrition rates and their perspectives on client attrition and retention strategies. We further conducted an inductive thematic analysis of the qualitative data. Findings indicate that nurses' attrition rates were not significantly associated with their views and strategies to retain clients. Nurses and supervisors noted that clients' competing priorities and 'chaotic lives' primarily explained attrition. They thought that clients often left the program upon receiving enough information and skills or achieving key milestones, which may reflect reaching a saturation point, albeit prior to the full completion of the program. We offer recommendations to assess performance based on client accomplishments rather than whether they participated until the prescribed endpoint., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)