Family Map
of the Parenting Environment
in Early Childhood
About the Developers
The Family Map was developed by a research team lead by Leanne Whiteside-Mansell and included Robert H. Bradley, Patti Bokony, and Nicola Conners-Burrow with research support from Danya Johnson and LaTunja Sockwell.
The research team partnered with two large Head Start providers in Arkansas: Child Development, Inc, and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Head Start.
Child Development, Inc. (CDI), under the leadership of Ms. JoAnn Williams for the development of the Family Map, is private, non-profit and operated 24 centers in 13 counties in Arkansas. CDI is the largest provider of comprehensive, early childhood services to children and their families in AR, serving over 2,000 children a year in EHS, HS and other programs.
University of Arkansas for Medical Science Head Start, under the leadership of Dr. Charles Fields and Mary Kaye McKinney, is a public organization operated through the UAMS Dept of Pediatrics in Little Rock (central AR). UAMS Head Start/Early Head Start provides services to 1,090 Head Start and 40 Early Head Start children and families in Pulaski County.
http://www.arheadstart.org/uams_ecco_head_start.htm
Leanne Whiteside-Mansell, Ed. D. is a Professor of Pediatrics at UAMS. Dr. Whiteside-Mansell has more than 80 presentations and publications related to parenting and child development in at-risk populations. She has extensive research experience having served as an evaluator for the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation (EHSRE) Study, investigator for Starting Early, Starting Smart (SESS, a project that targeted Head Start families), statistician for two CSAP and CSAT cross-site studies, and evaluator for Safe Schools, Healthy Students. Further, Dr. Whiteside-Mansell has extensive expertise in measurement development and psychometric data analyses.
Robert H. Bradley, Ph.D. is Professor of Education at the University of AR at Little Rock. Dr. Bradley has an extensive background in the measurement of family characteristics (e.g., the Home Observations for the Measurement of the Environment, HOME; Caldwell & Bradley, 1984) as well as family measures more generally. He has over 200 publications and currently serves on the editorial boards of Developmental Psychology, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Parenting: Science & Practice, and Early Education & Development. He serves on a number of research advisory groups (e.g., the NIDA-funded Maternal Lifestyles Study, the National Children’s Study, the Head Start Impact study, and the Biobehavioral and Behavioral research committee for NICHD). He is an investigator for the Early Head Start National Evaluation Study and the NICHD Study of Child Care and Youth Development.
Nicola Conners-Burrow, Ph. D. is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at UAMS. Dr Conners-Burrow has a background in Educational Psychology and Research and more than nine years experience in research involving high risk populations. She is currently the lead evaluator of a Community Mental Health Centers Partnership with Early Childhood Programs (ECMH) project funded by the State of Arkansas and was a co-investigator on SESS. Both of these projects focus on integrating mental health services into early childcare settings like Head Start. She has served as an investigator on the EHSRE study and a SAMHSA funded project to reduce early conduct problems in children served in HS through teacher and parent training and mental health consultation. She has presented and published in the area of substance abuse treatment for women and children, at-risk children, and the psychometric studies of tools.
Patti Bokony, Ph. D. is an Assistant Professor in the UAMS Dept of Psychiatry. Dr Bokony has extensive experience working with Head Start programs and families. In the past she directed evaluation for the UAMS Head Start program. She has served as Principle Investigator for the Head Start Oral Health Initiative, ACF Responsible Fatherhood grant, and a state-funded Prevention Services grant to implement a SAMHSA model prevention program with Head Start children. She authored the Arkansas Pre-K Social-Emotional Learning training, a 45-hour training required of all state-funded preschool teachers. She has more than 20 years experience working with high risk children and their families, including United Cerebral Palsy, Easter Seals of AR, and AR CARES, a drug treatment program for women with children where she was Children’s Program Director and Program Director. She is actively involved in the AR early childhood community. She sits on the Steering Committees of the AR Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Initiative (co-chair of Social-Emotional Workgroup) and Strengthening Families through Early Care and Education Initiative, and is a member of the Parenting Education Task Force.
Danya Johnson, B.S. is a staff member of the UAMS Partners for Inclusive Communities. Ms. Johnson was the study coordinator for the EC-Family Map project. Ms Johnson has over 10 years experience conducting data collection in the home with HS families, creating data collection instruments, and analyzing data.
LaTunja Sockwell is a staff member of the UAMS Partners for Inclusive Communities. Ms. Sockwell was the data coordinator for the EC-Family Map project. She has expertise in data analyses, managed longitudinal data, used REMARK to scan data, and has demonstrated competency in SPSS programming.