Psychological consultation in Head Start programs.

Reports the authors' experiences as consultants to a community Head Start program. Discussed are the factors which, it is felt, other consultants should consider: "(1) shifting guidelines, (2) semitrained personnel, (3) 'establishment' interference, (4) racial undertones, (5) slapdash physical facilities, (6) lack of professional structures and continuity, and (7) special demands of poor and underachieving people." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental health consultation and psychology internship training.

Psychology interns trained in American Psychological Association-approved internship programs are expected to demonstrate an intermediate to advanced level of skill in mental health consultation. Where do students learn the skills to consult with colleagues, other professionals, or the public? This article describes a 1-year, 2-phase training experience in consultation at a university mental health service. The program is theory based, sequential, and builds over the course of the internship. Discussion underscores the positive impact of the training and reviews potential problems that may emerge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental health consultation in the pediatric intensive care unit.

The need for psychosocial intervention to be integrated with medical care on intensive care units is high, but too often mental health professionals are ill-equipped by traditional training programs for such work. Medical crisis counseling provides a conceptual framework useful in developing the skills needed to effectively intervene in such settings. The pediatric intensive care unit ( PICU ) is arguably one of the most emotionally demanding and high-stress areas where mental health clinicians may be asked to consult. This article describes medical crisis consultation in the PICU setting, suggests survival strategies for the mental health consultant to the PICU, and provides illustrative case examples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental health consultation with campus ministers: A pilot program.

Monitored issues raised by 15 campus ministers as they participated in a 1-yr mental health consultation program sponsored by a university counseling center. Issues raised (e.g., sexuality, suicide and crisis intervention, assertion training) and strategies used by the group and its leaders in dealing with the issues are discussed. (7 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Head Start is not child care.

Comments on S. Scarr's (see record 1997-38813-002) defense of cheap, minimally regulated child care. The author responds to Scarr's comments on Head Start. Scarr dismisses Head Start without acknowledging the comprehensive nature of its intervention in the lives of poor children and their families. Head Start does more than child care aspires to do: Head Start makes sure that poor children get medical and dental care, helps their families gain access to social services, offers volunteer and paid employment to parents, involves parents in governance, serves nutritious meals, provides intellectual stimulation, and above all, helps children develop the social competence necessary to succeed in school. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strengthening mental health services in Head Start: A challenge for the 1990s.

Steps must be taken to strengthen mental health services by building on Head Start's philosophy and by translating innovations in mental health services for older children and adolescents into improved services for young children and their families. Recommendations for strengthening Head Start's mental health program include creating a unified vision that reaffirms a holistic, family-focused, and comprehensive services approach; ensuring that mental health services are responsive to the diversity in families served; increasing coordination of mental health services and linkages with new initiatives; increasing resources and providing assistance in gaining access to new sources of funding; supporting innovation; and integrating the new paradigm for children's mental health services into more traditional approaches to intervention within Head Start. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Accelerating math development in Head Start classrooms.

Teachers implemented a 6-week classroom intervention designed to promote emergent math skills and math interest in preschool-aged children. Teachers in experimental classrooms incorporated math-relevant activities into their daily routine during circle time, transitions, mealtime, and small-group activities. Control classrooms engaged in their typical activities. After the program, experimental children scored significantly higher than control children on a standardized test of math ability and enjoyed math activities more than the control children, as measured by both teacher and self-report. Teachers rated the program as highly satisfactory and reported that they increased their own enjoyment and skill in implementing math activities in their classrooms. The intervention effects were largely accounted for by substantial gains by boys, whereas girls showed much smaller program response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Head Start and preschool education: Toward continued improvement.

The first 5 years of life influence school readiness and achievement; high-quality preschool experiences can enhance development (C. T. Ramey & Ramey, 1998, 1999). Ripple, Giliam, Chanana, and Zigler (1999) provide valuable data about states' efforts on behalf of preschoolers. Their data reveal that too many states still have no programs, although some have launched promising, innovative, and universal preschool programs with accompanying research. A continued role for Head Start is thus justified, but only if Head Start invests seriously and consistently in high-quality programs. Present fragmentation of services, as well as support for weak programs, must be ended. Effective technical assistance to programs and the promotion of active collaboration with other community agencies, including schools, is critical to success for states and Head Start alike. Forging a new, powerful national coalition that has adequate resources, strong political clout, needed expertise, and a commitment to children's development and school readiness is necessary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Head Start: Criticisms in a constructive context.

Recent criticisms of Head Start have arisen as a result of unrealistic expectations, loosely generalized evidence, and misunderstood, incomplete research. But these criticisms have forced advocates to focus on administrative problems that make Head Start less effective than it could be. This healthy climate of critical discussion has led to plans to improve program services and to proceed with expansion in a more thoughtful manner. The debate has sparked further ideas to optimize the Head Start approach and make the program more responsive to the needs of children and families in poverty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Head Start for the 21st century.

Social and economic conditions since the creation of Head Start in 1965 have worsened. The stresses of economic restructuring in the US and the pervasiveness of violence have severely eroded the capacity of many families to provide safe and caring homes in strong communities. The necessary adaptation of Head Start to these new conditions involves the essential linkage of early childhood and family support approaches with community economic development. This strategy must include a reappraisal of mental health paradigms that will enable children, youth, and families to be healthy and productive members of their neighborhoods and country. Although public support for Head Start remains strong, considerable rethinking about a Head Start for the 21st century is now occurring; results will affect the quality of life for the entire society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Outcomes of an emergent literacy intervention in Head Start.

Classrooms of 4-yr-olds attending Head Start were randomly assigned to an intervention condition, involving an add-on emergent literacy curriculum, or a control condition, involving the regular Head Start curriculum. Children in the intervention condition experienced interactive book reading at home and in the classroom as well as a classroom-based sound and letter awareness program. Children were pretested and posttested on standardized tests of language, writing, linguistic awareness, and print concepts. Effects of the intervention were significant across all children in the domains of writing and print concepts. Effects on language were large but only for those children whose primary caregivers had been actively involved in the at-home component of the program. One linguistic awareness subtest, involving the ability to identify the 1st letter and 1st sound of words, showed significant effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Head Start: Only the best for America's children.

In March 1993, Senator N. L. Kassebaum introduced the Head Start Quality Improvement Act, aimed at building on the success of Head Start by connecting a dramatically increased budget with measures designed to upgrade the quality of the program. The legislation provides the US Department of Health and Human Services with the mandate, the resources, and the necessary legislative tools, using a 5-part approach to (1) establish general performance measures for all grantees; (2) strengthen program accountability mechanisms, training, and technical assistance support systems; (3) provide more effective policy enforcement and instill more competition in the program; (4) expand the current Head Start Transition Project to assist children and their families in making a successful move from Head Start to elementary school; and (5) assist families entering or reentering the work force. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental health technology.

Discusses the acute need for the development of viable technologies in social-behavioral areas, e.g., mental health. Technology is defined as anything that increases the efficiency of some work process, and has the potential for being based on science. By examining the nature and historical development of established technologies, some of their problems can hopefully be avoided. The field of mental health is essentially pretechnological, although, as is true of other social-behavioral areas, potential scientific data bases and directions for technological development are not lacking. 8 such areas are identified and briefly discussed. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contemporary issues in mental health consultation.

Introduces readers to this special issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal, which focuses on current approaches to the provision of mental health consultation in a variety of settings and from varying theoretical persuasions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does Head Start work? A 1-year follow-up comparison of disadvantaged children attending Head Start, no preschool, and other preschool programs.

This article examines how successful Project Head Start has been as a preschool program for economically disadvantaged children. Most Head Start evaluations have not controlled for initial differences between Head Start and comparison groups. They have also limited comparisons to those with no preschool experience, rather than considering other preschools as an alternative comparison group. Subjects were 969 disadvantaged children attending Head Start, other preschool, or no preschool in 1969–1970, longitudinally evaluated on a variety of cognitive measures. Large initial group differences were observed between Head Start children and both comparison groups, with those in Head Start at a disadvantage on nearly every demographic and cognitive measure. Adjusting for initial background and cognitive differences, Head Start children showed significantly larger gains on the Preschool Inventory and Motor Inhibition tests than either comparison group, with Black children in Head Start (especially those of below-average initial ability) gaining the most. However, despite substantial gains, Head Start children were still behind their peers in terms of absolute cognitive levels after a year in the program. Head Start proved an impressive instrument of short-term change, even compared with other preschool experience. Gains in behaviors other than intelligence suggest that the effects may not be limited to the cognitive domain. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental health practitioners and HIPAA.

The privacy and security of patients' medical records continue to challenge mental health practitioners in an ever-increasing electronic environment. Although practitioners were to be in compliance of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) by April 20, 2006, many practitioners still struggle to understand the nuances of the regulations. This article will cover the areas of HIPAA that relate specifically to the mental health practitioner who treats both adults and children. The article begins with important definitions such as “covered entity,” “individually identified health information,” and “electronic transactions.” Establishing that many mental health practitioners likely meet the definition of covered entities, the article details The Privacy Rule and The Security Rule. Included are issues concerning consents, authorizations, and objections along with enforcement of HIPAA. Also changes in enforcement to HIPAA by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), a part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 are discussed. Examples of violations and resulting enforcement will help practitioners better understand the regulations and how best to comply with these regulations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teachers' beliefs about former Head Start and non-Head Start first-grade children's motivation, performance, and future educational prospects.

The authors examined 33 first grade teachers' beliefs about their pupils' ability, effort, and interest in different academic tasks, making friends, and sports; how much education teachers thought children could and actually would achieve; and their expectations for children's next year's grades. Eighty-three of the children were former Head Start participants, and 55 were not. Teachers' beliefs and expected grades for the children were least positive in the academic areas. Teachers thought the children were capable of achieving a significantly higher level of education than they thought children actually would achieve. Teachers' beliefs about the former Head Start and non-Head Start children were similar, but teachers' beliefs did significantly differ by the children's ethnicity. Teachers' beliefs predicted children's test performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Construction and Evaluation of a Number Sense Test With Head Start Children.

The reliability and, to a lesser extent, the validity of the newly created Number Sense Test was evaluated with a group of 40 3- to 5-year-old children attending Head Start. Six number sense skills (e.g., counting, number identification, addition-subtraction) and children's feelings about school were assessed both before and after instruction either in 2 of these skills (i.e., counting and number identification) or in insects (i.e., an attention control condition). The Number Sense Test was found to have high internal consistency and to be a valid means of assessing pre- to posttest improvements in instructed skills as a function of condition. Except for addition-subtraction, training effects did not generalize to non-instructed number sense skills. In neither condition did instruction have a harmful effect on children's largely positive feelings about school. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)