ABSTRACT
Over the past 20 years, ecological theories of child development have been integrated into mainstream thought, and clear consensus has emerged that a child's development is affected by her parents and her family's life circumstances. According to Jacobs, the assumption that uniform interventions could be applied across programs and communities was one of the major shortcomings of the Great Society's early childhood program evaluations. Their approach neglected variations in program character that occur as individual programs evolve to best serve their particular set of clients with their particular constellation of staff within the political, cultural, and economic conditions of their communities. Programs are located in larger contexts, existing much as Bronfen-brenner describes the child in the family: as the core piece in a set of nested structures. Causal theories linking specific changes in children and families to specific family-oriented interventions are sparse and, at best, suggestive rather than definitive.
