The National Center for the Early Childhood Work Force, formerly the Child Care Employee Project, has moved to Washington.
The group, which was based in Oakland, Calif., before it moved last month, has fought for better compensation for child-care workers.
Its new director is Claudia Wayne, a former director of the National Committee on Pay Equity and assistant director for women’s rights for the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.
The center is at 733 15th St., N.W., Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20005; (202) 737-7700.
The DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund has awarded $250,000 in grants to five cities for before- and after-school child-care programs.
The grants to community foundations in Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, Seattle, and Tucson, Ariz., are part of a five-year, $6.5 million initiative the fund launched in 1993 with a grant to the Wellesley School-Age Child Care Project.
Most teenagers adopted as infants show no signs that adoption has had an ill effect on their mental health and well-being, a recent study asserts.
The four-year study, done by the Search Institute in Minneapolis for the National Institute of Mental Health, is based on a survey of 2,000 family members. It offers a look at 715 families that adopted babies between 1974 and 1980 in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
The report says adolescents who were adopted as babies thrive as well as their nonadopted peers and are slightly healthier on some psychological measures. But it stresses the value of strong parenting and of helping children deal with adoption issues.
Copies of “Growing Up Adopted: A Portrait of Adolescents and Their Families,’' are available for $23.45 each from the Search Institute at (800) 888-7828.
Two new studies address a key issue for welfare reform: child-support enforcement.
Copies of “Ending Poverty as We Know It: The Case for Child Support Enforcement and Assurance’’ are available for $12 each from the Center for Law and Social Policy, 1616 P St., N.W., Suite 150, Washington, D.C. 20036.
Copies of “Enforcing Child Support: Are States Doing the Job?’' are available for $7.95 each from the Children’s Defense Fund, 25 E St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001.
--DEBORAH L. COHEN
