2011 The Palm Beach County Family Study (Full Report)

SummarySimilar to previous analyses, we did not find much evidence of a relationship between the mothers’overall (or specific) service use and maternal and child outcomes. The evidence we did find suggests thatmothers with greater needs tend to use more services over time. This implies that those who may havegreater need for services are using them but that, once observable differences in circumstances betweenmothers with high and low need are accounted for, greater use of services overall—at least as measuredby this study—is not associated with improved outcomes.However, consistent with the literature on child development, we did find evidence of the important roleof parenting skills and practices in children’s development and school readiness. That is, mothers’parenting scores in year 1 are significantly and positively related to several of the child outcomes weexamined. These results suggest that effective interventions targeted at improving parenting skills aroundthe time of a child’s birth may be able to positively influence his or her development.A third finding concerns the potential positive impact of QIS center-based care, as opposed to parentaland other informal care, on child outcomes. When we examined possible differences between childrenenrolled in programs participating in Quality Counts (QC) and other formal childcare arrangements, wealso found some evidence that children in non-QC centers have better outcomes related to use of booksand other preliteracy outcomes—as reported by mothers—than those QC centers. However, we do nothave specific information on the characteristics of these childcare arrangements or the attendance andparticipation of the study children in them. These findings should be explored further. 73Finally, as in year 4, we also found that the children of foreign-born Hispanic mothers may be lagging intheir development when compared to the children of black mothers, both foreign- and U.S.-born. It is notclear whether these data from mothers’ self-reports point to real differences in development, differencesin interpretations of survey questions, or both. Teachers’ assessments of children’s development on thestandardized Florida Kindergarten Readiness Screen soon after they entered kindergarten were mixed inthis regard. There were no significant race/ethnicity or nativity differences in teachers’ ratings on theECHOS, a comprehensive child development screen. However, children of foreign-born Hispanicmothers were not assessed as highly on the FAIR, a screen of literacy skills. In addition, children in thestudy sample did not perform as well as other children entering kindergarten in the school district. Thiswas not surprising given their overall higher risk characteristics.73 A recently completed study of the school readiness rates of children attending programs in the Quality Counts system suggestspositive effects of the QC (Shen, Tackett, Ma 2009).Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago 131