Screening young children for developmental conditions such as speech and language delay is considered to be a part of the Child Health Surveillance programme in the UK. It is currently practised in many different ways throughout the country and like screening for other conditions conventionally identified in infancy, has been the subject of some concern for those responsible for providing such services. This systematic review (Law et al. 1998) was hypothesis driven and aimed to: i) establish whether, given the available evidence, there was sufficient evidence to warrant the introduction of universal screening for speech and language delays in children up to seven years of age; ii) identify gaps in the available literature; iii) identify priority areas in need of further investigation and iv); provide evidence-based recommendations for the future provision of services.

Screening for primary speech and language delay: a systematic review of the literature.

Nonprofit child care centers are frequently observed to produce child care which is, on average, of higher quality than care provided in commercial child care centers. In part, this nonprofit advantage is due to different input choices made by nonprofit centers—lower child-staff ratios, better-educated staff and directors, higher rates of professional development for staff. Nonprofit centers may have an additional productivity advantage, due to unmeasured staff motivation and abilities or to better management of the production of good-quality child care. However, where nonprofit and for-profit child care firms compete in the same local markets, we speculate that this extra advantage should only appear where demand is sufficiently “thick” to permit a quality differentiation strategy to be financially viable for nonprofits. We estimate the effect of nonprofit status on quality, controlling for differences in financial resources available to the center, differences in the clientele served, and differences in staff and center inputs. In this conventional examination, nonprofit status has a moderately positive impact on quality. However, when we account for the unobserved heterogeneity and separate markets into “thick” and “thin,” a particularly strong nonprofit advantage is found in thick markets, but no productivity advantage for nonprofits is found in thin markets. This finding suggests a clear role for nonprofit organizations in improving the cost-quality trade-off faced by parents, but also identifies the market conditions that affect the ability of nonprofit managers to employ this advantage. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

The nonprofit advantage: Producing quality in thick and thin child care markets

For decades, developmental research has involved the study of sex differences in language acquisition. Many studies of these differences have found a slight advantage in competence for females early in life that seems to wane with age. However, because most of these studies have focused on sex differences in mean values, they have mostly neglected sex differences in variance with males being more variable. In the current study, we examined sex differences in language competence in terms of mean values and variance in large samples (N > 10,000) of German children aged 3–6 years. We administered several tests to assess the children's vocabulary, grammar, speech comprehension, pronunciation, and the processing of sentences and nonce words. Girls performed better than boys in all domains, most often to a statistically significant degree, although the effect sizes were small. Differences decreased with age. Boys varied significantly more than girls in their language competence. In response, we discuss explanations for these findings, as well as recommend directions for future research.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0142716415000624

Sex differences in language competence of 3- to 6-year-old children

In reviewing the field of youth development, of which youth workers are a part, it is clear it has had a long and complex history that is intertwined with other disciplines. More recently youth workers have experienced a transformation of sorts, with youth programs in the past being seen exclusively as a place to play and have fun, whereas today’s expectations include a much broader focus on the overall positive development of young people. This evolution has been heavily influenced by a number of societal changes that have placed increasing demands on youth programs. Today’s youth workers are faced with the responsibility to promote a young person’s development which often includes supporting academic success and graduation from high school, reducing risk-taking behaviors, increasing positive health attitudes, and more. Youth workers have seen their role change dramatically over the past 20 years with greater demands and increased accountability.

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The Evolving Role of Youth Workers

In many European countries, it is conceptually problematic to present the care and education of young children as separate because they are simply not distinguished from each other. It might be more appropriate to represent integration of care and education as a continuum, with the UK, where childcare and education have been treated as distinct in policy and in practice, representing one extreme. Childcare in the UK, where it exists, has been 'wrapped around' a standard two-and-a-half hour education offer for 3-4 year-olds. Attempts are now being made to change this situation, and to offer 'integrated' provision in 'children's centres'. However, 'integration' is an umbrella term that encompasses many different meanings. It may refer only to different types of services working alongside one another, in adjacent spaces, loosely coordinated, but without any fundamental change of approach; or it may mean a coherent service equally accessible to all potential users, with a common costing, staffing, health, pedagogic and curricular framework for all provision. It may also mean combining care and health provision, rather than care and education provision. These are the issues that this review set out to clarify.

What is the impact of out-of-home integrated care and education settings on children aged 0-6 and their parents?

Young Children with Special Needs: Prevalence and Implications in Nova Scotia

Auspice, Location, Provincial Legislation and Funding of Day Care in Atlantic Canada: Relationships with Centre Quality and Implications for Policy.

Comparisons with other occupations, which may be seen as entailing similar levels of responsibility and training, indicate clearly that day care providers do not have comparable professional status. Reasons for this relate to two general areas: public perception of the value and nature of the work; and the lack of a clear identity within the profession. The situation will only improve if those entering the field are aware of the issues and prepared to address them. Training programs have a crucial role to play in this regard.

Mary E. Lyon

Papers

Young Children with Special Needs: Prevalence and Implications in Nova Scotia

Auspice, Location, Provincial Legislation and Funding of Day Care in Atlantic Canada: Relationships with Centre Quality and Implications for Policy.

15: Professionalizing Day Care