Early Childhood/Child Care

Children play out of focus in a daycare.

Texas continues to face child care accessibility crisis

March 20, 2024

Texas continues to grapple with a persistent challenge: providing accessible and high-quality child care at an affordable rate, as outlined in a recent policy brief by researchers at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. The current shortfall not only affects working families but also impedes the state’s economic growth.

rural_tx

Rural America’s business growth is rooted in surprising factors

July 6, 2023
Local banks, a diverse and young population, a significant immigrant community, and the availability of vital health care infrastructure such as elder care and child care services are the unexpected predictors of business creation in rural America, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the LBJ School.

Anti-Poverty Medicine Through Medical-Financial Partnerships: A New Approach to Child Poverty

Article, Refereed Journal
Academic Pediatrics
Academic Pediatrics

Poverty threatens child health. In the United States, financial strain, which encompasses income and asset poverty, is common with many complex etiologies. Even relatively successful antipoverty programs and policies fall short of serving all families in need, endangering health. We describe a new approach to address this pervasive health problem: antipoverty medicine. Historically, medicine has viewed poverty as a social problem outside of its scope. Increasingly, health care has addressed poverty's downstream effects, such as food and housing insecurity. However, strong evidence now shows that poverty affects biology, and thus, merits treatment as a medical problem. A new approach uses Medical-Financial Partnerships (MFPs), in which healthcare systems and financial service organizations collaborate to improve health by reducing family financial strain. MFPs help families grow assets by increasing savings, decreasing debt, and improving credit and economic opportunity while building a solid foundation for lifelong financial, physical, and mental health. We review evidence-based approaches to poverty alleviation, including conditional and unconditional cash transfers, savings vehicles, debt relief, credit repair, financial coaching, and employment assistance. We describe current national MFPs and highlight different applications of these evidence-based clinical financial interventions. Current MFP models reveal implementation opportunities and challenges, including time and space constraints, time-sensitive processes, lack of familiarity among patients and communities served, and sustainability in traditional medical settings. We conclude that pediatric health care practices can intervene upon poverty and should consider embracing antipoverty medicine as an essential part of the future of pediatric care.

Research Topic
Early Childhood/Child Care

New policy guide to help state leaders strengthen health of infants and toddlers

Sept. 15, 2020
AUSTIN, Texas—A first-of-its-kind state policy road map for children prenatal-to-3 will soon help guide state leaders as they develop and implement the most effective policies to strengthen their s

The effect of CASA on child Welfare permanency outcomes

Article, Refereed Journal
Child Maltreatment

The present study is the largest and most rigorous study to date on the effects of being appointed a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) on permanency outcomes of children in foster care. The intent-to-treat study accounts for selection bias by applying inverse probability weighting to logistic and sequential logistic regressions in a large sample of children in foster care in the state of Texas (N = 31,754). Overall, children appointed a CASA have significantly lower odds than children without a CASA of achieving permanency. They have lower odds of being reunified, greater odds of being adopted (if not reunified), and lower odds of being placed in permanent kin guardianship (if not reunified or adopted) than children who are not appointed CASA. This study makes an additional contribution by looking beyond the aggregate effect of CASA on permanency by examining the effect of CASA for different age groups and different types of first placement after removal.

Research Topic
Early Childhood/Child Care

Texas early childhood care and education institutions of higher education: Capacity survey final report

Report
Juniper, C., Schroeder, D. G., Gupta, A., Prince, H., Faulkner, M., Marra, L. (2013). Texas Early Childhood Care and Education Institutions of Higher Education: Capacity Survey Final Report. Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources and Child and Family Research Institute, University of Texas, Austin, October, 2013.

This paper presents a synthesis of the information from the two reports on the education and certification levels of ECCE professionals, the level of workplace preparedness experienced by survey respondents, the capacity of IHEs to prepare students on a variety of workplace skills as reported by IHE administrators, and an analysis of the relationship between the professionalrsquo;s sense of preparedness and IHE academic offerings. Challenges facing both students and institutions are analyzed, followed by recommendations for future research and policy issues.

Research Topic
Early Childhood/Child Care
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