ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: Family Involvement / Accommodation & Adaptation

The authors have worked extensively in the field of family support, with emphasis on empowerment of families of young children with handicapping conditions.  In this book, they have distilled a great deal of professional experience and wisdom regarding effective help-giving practices, ways to engage parents and families in parent-professional partnerships to benefit children, and common barriers to such partnerships.  Two simple field-tested measures are included which appear valid and useful for community-based programs that want to ensure maximum participation and involvement of parents and families in their programs for children.  These are the Family Resource Scale (measuring the adequacy of practical resources such as financial resources, health care, and time) available to households of young children), and the Family Support Scale (measuring the perceived helpfulness and supportiveness of various persons such as family, friends, and professional and program staff).

This book forms the basis for the State Strengthening Evaluation Guide, and several chapters in this book are relevant to the outcome domain of Family Involvement / Accommodation & Adaptation.  In this chapter, Weiss specifically makes the case that past failures to measure such factors as family involvement, and attendance and participation levels, has restricted our understanding of how and why intervention programs for children work.

Ysseldyke, J. E., & Thurlow, M. (1993, October). Developing a model of educational outcomes (NCEO Report No. 1). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, College of Education, National Center on Educational Outcomes.
 

Describes a conceptual model of outcomes and indicators for children developed by the National Center on Educational Outcomes which has been adopted by the Children's National Outcome Work Group as an organizing framework. Although designed with public education in mind, the model is adaptable to informal and community-based programs. The eight outcome domains identified in the model are Physical Health, Responsibility and Independence, Contribution and Citizenship, Academic and Functional Literacy, Personal and Social Adjustment, Family Involvement / Accommodation and Adaptation, Satisfaction, and Presence and Participation.