Dealing with Venomous Snakes in Florida School Yards

This document is part of an informational package designed to help teachers and parents protect children from potentially hazardous interactions with venomous snakes in Florida. Our target audience is the Florida Public School System, but private schools, child daycare centers, and homeowners will also find this information useful. This document is WEC 199, one of a 4-part series of the Wildlife Ecology and Conservation Department entitled Dealing with Venomous Snakes in Florida School Yards, UF/IFAS Extension. Original publication date August 2005. WEC 199/UW225: Dealing with Venomous Snakes in Florida School Yards (ufl.edu)

THE RELATION BETWEEN A DEVELOPMENTAL AND SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL SCREENING TEST USED IN PUBLIC CHILD DAYCARE CENTERS IN BRAZIL

Background: Two developmental screening instruments for infants and young children, the Ages & Stages Questionnaires-Third Edition (ASQ-3) and the Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional (ASQ:SE), are widely used in the US and internationally. Both tools are sometimes used concurrently but the relation between children’s scores on the two tools is seldom investigated.Methods: The Brazilian versions of ASQ-3 and ASQ:SE, known as the ASQ-BR and ASQ:SE-BR, were used for assessing 13,470 children ages one to four in public child daycare centres in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Four groups were defined according to children’s ages as one, two, three, and four year-olds. Correlation and multiple regression were employed to explore the relation between children’s scores on the ASQ-BR and the ASQ:SE-BR.Results: Results indicated that the domain scores of ASQ-BR, including communication (r = -0.38 to -0.44), gross motor (r = -0.19 to -0.32), fine motor (r = -0.33 to -0.45), problem solving (r = -0.36 to -0.42), and personal-social (r = -0.38 to -0.51) were significantly correlated with ASQ:SE-BR scores. Regression analyses suggested that the communication and personal-social domains were significant predictors of social-emotional scores in most of the age groups.Conclusion: General developmental assessment is suggested to be conducted with social-emotional screening. If the workload is heavy for administers to use both screeners concurrently, social-emotional screening is recommended for children who fail communication or personal-social domains on developmental screening tests.

Impact of preventive care orientation on caries status among preschool children

ABSTRACT Objective: This study aims to study the impact of preventive care orientation given to caregivers of child daycare centers on their knowledge and on the prevalence of early childhood caries (ECC) among preschool children. Materials and Methods: Caregivers of twenty child daycare centers in Emirate of Sharjah were interviewed and 435 children attending these centers were surveyed for decayed missing filled teeth (dmft). The sample data were analyzed using t-tests and one-way ANOVA to assess the statistical significance of the differences in dmft score found between groups. Results: No significant correlation was found between dmft scores and family income of urban or rural centers, mothers' level of education, mothers' employment status in public centers, and frequency of dental visits. There was a significant correlation between dmft scores and mothers' employment status in private centers with the lowest scores among children of working mothers. High caries rates were observed in children attending private daycare centers where sweetened milk, juices, and snacks were served more frequently. There was a significant difference between private and public centers in caregivers' level of knowledge regarding oral health in favor of the latter. Low dmft scores were found to be associated with high level of knowledge of caregivers in public centers. Conclusions: Children are more likely to develop ECC if their caregivers are lacking knowledge or regular provision of preventive care orientation. This makes caregivers and school teachers better candidates for oral health education programs than parents.