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This experiment will examine how systemic racial biases in the child welfare system might negatively impact Black parents' interest in participating in home visiting programs. We will also assess the role of alternative labeling strategies (i.e., “new baby wellness visit” as opposed to “home visit”) in shaping engagement decisions.

Evidence-based and culturally relevant parenting programs strengthen adults’ capacity to support children’s health and development. Optimizing parent participation in programs implemented at scale is a prevailing challenge. Our collaborative team of program developers, implementers, and researchers applied insights from the field of behavioral economics (BE) to support parent participation in ParentCorps—a family-centered program delivered as an enhancement to pre-kindergarten—as it scaled in a large urban school district. We designed a bundle of BE-infused parent outreach materials and successfully showed their feasibility in site-level randomized pilot implementation. The site-level study did not show a statistically significant impact on family attendance. A sub-study with a family-level randomization design showed that varying the delivery time of BE-infused digital outreach significantly increased the likelihood of families attending the parenting program. Lessons on the potential value of a BE-infused approach to support outreach and engagement in parenting programs are discussed in the context of scaling up efforts. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11121-021-01249-0.

High-quality early care and education is increasingly viewed as a path toward narrowing socioeconomic gaps in children’s school readiness and development. Features of early childhood education envi...

We newly apply the concept of self-affirmation typically used in the domain of health and education to the domain of parenting. Recruiting parents of children age 13 or younger (n = 1,044), we test how eliciting positive self-concept affects interest in receiving parenting materials and participating in a parenting program. We find that an adapted, pride-based written self-affirmation exercise increased parents’ positive self-concept and their interest in parenting programs and resources, particularly among parents with a high baseline fear of judgment associated with seeking help. Implications for applying insights from psychology as a strategy to mitigate fear of judgment to optimize participation in an evidence-based parenting program at scale are discussed.

The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) serves dual goals of promoting low-income parents' employment, education, and training, and supporting parents’ use of high quality child care and education. While changes in CCDF policies have aimed to improve the accessibility and functionality of CCDF subsidies for all eligible low-income families, utilization among Hispanic families, who represent the highest growing proportion of income poor families, remains low. Our study explores the ways in which the state-level child care policy context may differentially affect utilization among Hispanic families and contribute to racial/ethnic disparities in program utilization. We use the child care accommodation model and administrative exclusion to offer an expanded conceptual framework. We consider how policies and administrative practices may interact with demographic and community characteristics common among low-income Hispanic families and impose differential learning, psychological, and compliance costs for accessing government assistance programs such as CCDF. Our analysis of the 13 states in which over 80% of the low-income Hispanic child population resides, identifies policies around eligibility, documentation requirements, receipt prioritization, and the online user experience that vary across states and may serve to either facilitate or constrain access to a child care subsidy. Implications for the design of child care policies to equitably support economic and child well-being for all eligible families are discussed.

Poor families often combine public benefits with social network and community resources to cope with economic instability. This study shows that decisions to combine formal and informal resources are as dynamic as the economic instability they are intended to buffer. Using survey data of poor families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in Durham, North Carolina, this study takes advantage of the within-month economic instability created by the SNAP benefit cycle to show how families intentionally combine their formal and informal resources throughout a benefit month. Results show that families receiving SNAP benefits are more likely to borrow money for food 3 weeks after receiving SNAP benefits. Household food insecurity remains stable throughout the SNAP month, suggesting that this use of families’ informal social safety nets may effectively buffer against economic instability.

This study examines how Black and Hispanic parents' report of intergroup relations measured through group identity, linked fate, competition, and conflict are related to their utilization of Head Start services in a region that experienced Hispanic population growth. Surveys were conducted with 227 Black and 130 Hispanic parents in poverty in a mid-sized city in the South. For Hispanic parents, a sense of linked fate within their ethnic group is associated with a lower likelihood of enrollment, however, measures of intergroup relations are not related to the Head Start enrollment status of Black parents. Implications for policies on preschool expansion are discussed.

This study uses a North Carolina administrative data set to analyze racial segregation and student achievement in Wake County during race-based and income-based school assignment plans. We find a modest increase in the level of racial segregation in Wake schools during the income-based plan, but compared with other large districts in the state, Wake County remained relatively desegregated. We also find a small increase in reading and math test scores and a narrowing of the Black-White test score gap. Our analysis indicates that the improvement in math scores may be partially due to school composition changes attributable to the income-based assignment plan.

Following changes to federal cash assistance programs in 1996, low-income families now rely on a set of social programs: the Earned Income Tax Credit, food assistance, publicly funded health insurance, and child-care subsidies. In this review, we present evidence on the effects of these programs on families' economic circumstances, families' psychological well-being and functioning, and children's developmental outcomes. Social safety net programs improve families' economic circumstances, thereby achieving their primary goal. Few studies have examined impacts on children's developmental outcomes but overall, programs improve children's academic, behavioral, and physical well-being. Even fewer studies have examined impacts on parents' psychological well-being or family functioning, leaving gaps in the literature. The review concludes with discussions of the Great Recession and whether effects found during stronger economic times generalize to the most recent economic crisis, and with a discussion of social safety net policies in countries outside the United States.