This video and companion brief from Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child provide an overview of what executive function is and how it affects one’s life-long capacity to learn. It explains how these skills develop, what can disrupt their development, and how supporting them can pay off in school, work and life.

This paper, from the Crittenton Women’s Union (CWU), discusses how executive functioning skills are important to move out of poverty. Executive functioning includes skills like impulse control, working memory, and mental flexibility. Persistent poverty can influence brain development and executive functioning and provide challenges for individuals as adults. The paper reviews how improving executive functioning can help promote positive outcomes and discusses how policy and programs can be developed to improve executive functioning.

The Office of Family Assistance, through its Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) efforts, hosted a live Expert Panel webcast that explored the effects of toxic stress in childhood. This moderated discussion brought together preeminent, nationally recognized experts and practitioners to describe toxic stress, how exposure to childhood toxic stress can have life-long consequences as adults, and how practitioners and community-based organizations are working to prevent toxic stress exposure in children and ameliorate its effects on adults, strengthening families and communities.

The Center on the Developing Child from Harvard University released a Question and Answer sheet assessing the "Long Reach of Early Childhood Poverty" report. The report was authored by Greg Duncan and Katherine Magnuson. This piece reviews the evidence linking early childhood poverty to long-lasting consequences and discusses strategies to combat the effects of poverty-induced stress on vulnerable families with young children. The new data shows that when children experience poverty, it affects their later-life outcomes. Children's eventual labor market success appears to be compromised much more by poverty experienced early, rather than later, in childhood.

This research, from the National Center for Children in Poverty, looks at the role of trauma long- and short-term for children. Trauma not only can cause physical and emotional health conditions, but can cause difficulties in learning, ongoing behavior problems, impaired relationships, and poor social and emotional competence. Additionally, children exposed to trauma at a younger age are more vulnerable to problems related to brain development than older children.

Child abuse and domestic violence often co-occur in families, and such data has led child welfare programs to re-evaluate service delivery protocols for families. This article reviews Family to Family Grantee experiences and offers guidance on how to better serve families in the child welfare system facing domestic violence issues as well.

Child abuse and domestic violence often co-occur in families, and such data has led child welfare programs to re-evaluate service delivery protocols for families. This article reviews Family to Family Grantee experiences and offers guidance on how to better serve families in the child welfare system facing domestic violence issues as well.