This chapter examines historical experience, recent developments, and ongoing issues facing the field of early childhood intervention for low-income children and families. The discussion includes an assessment of the evidence for the effectiveness of particular approaches; lessons learned and continuing questions about program design; and an assessment of progress made toward the development of coherent early childhood intervention systems at local and state levels. The chapter also examines early childhood intervention in the context of larger trends in the human services.

The chapter focuses principally (though not solely) on services for families with children birth to age 3, whose primary objectives are enhanced child rearing and child development, and in some cases improved maternal well-being and child health. These traditional early childhood intervention objectives, and the services that follow from them, increasingly are combined with others, such as adult literacy and employment, and even community development. In fact, it is becoming more difficult, and in some respects less useful, to distinguish early childhood intervention from related fields of service for young families.

As a discrete field, early childhood intervention is at a critical point in its evolution. A number of new assumptions, program approaches, and specific models were introduced during the 1990s. There is now an abundance of practical wisdom and of lessons learned from scores of large and small initiatives, as well as a renewed preoccupation with the importance of the birth-to-3 period in children's lives.