About the Department of Child and Family Studies

CFS Resource Centers

The Department of Child & Family Studies is home to a range of resource centers dedicated to serving as points of access to current information on a variety of issues. Many of these resource centers are funded to bring research to practice in service of children and families.

Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD)

The Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD-USF) at the University of South Florida is a community-based project that provides information and consultation to individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and related disabilities. CARD at USF is one of six regional CARD sites funded by the Florida State Legislature and offers instruction and coaching to families and professionals through a training and assistance model.
Principal Investigator: Don Kincaid, Karen Berkman
Website: http://card-usf.fmhi.usf.edu/

Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention for Young Children (TACSEI).

Effective January 1, 2008, the Center for Evidence-Based Practice: Young Children with Challenging Behavior (CEBP) became the Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention for Young Children, or TACSEI. TACSEI is a continuation and expansion of the work of CEBP. TACSEI will give decision makers, caregivers and service providers an enhanced awareness, understanding of, and ability to use evidence-based practices for improving the social-emotional outcomes for young children with, or at risk for, delays or disabilities. The best part is that you will still have access to the great resources and information developed by CEBP, and a range of new resources and assistance for designing approaches that meet the needs of young children at home and in the community.
Principal Investigator: Lise Fox
Website: http://challengingbehavior.fmhi.usf.edu/

Center for the Study of Children's Futures

The Center for the Study of Children's Futures is dedicated to promoting the health and well-being of Florida's children through data, research, analysis, and community involvement. Approved as a Type 2 Center within the Florida Board of Education Division of Colleges and Universities, CSCF serves to centralize research, public education, and outreach activities benefiting the citizens of Florida. A variety of data and resource materials are gathered throughout each year, including information on state and county level data, data sources, and comparable information from other states and the nation.
Principal Investigator: Susan Weitzel
Website: http://cscf.fmhi.usf.edu/

Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (CPBIS)

The Center has been established by the Office of Special Education Programs, US Department of Education to give schools capacity-building information and technical assistance for identifying, adapting, and sustaining effective school-wide disciplinary practices. The primary goals of (CPBIS) are to identify and enhance knowledge about, and practical demonstration of, school-wide PBS practices, systems and outcomes along the three-tiered continuum (primary, secondary, tertiary); and to develop, conduct and evaluate technical assistance and dissemination efforts that allow evidence-based practices to be implemented on a large scale with high durability and effectiveness.
Principal Investigator: Don Kincaid
Website: http://pbis.fmhi.usf.edu/

Center on Self-Employment

The Center on Self-Employment will serve as the statewide training and technical assistance resource for youth and adults with disabilities, families, state agencies, school districts and community rehabilitation providers. The Center will focus on creating awareness about self-employment, state level policy and local level implementation, direct service (training and technical assistance) for customers of Vocational Rehabilitation and sustainability of self-employment supports through capacity building within the community rehabilitation provider community.
Principal Investigator: Marc Tasse

Florida Center for Inclusive Communities (University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities)

CFS houses the Florida Center for Inclusive Communities: A University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD). The UCEDD is part of a national network of 67 university-affiliated centers that advance policy and practice for and with people with developmental disabilities, their families, and communities. Through leadership in research and evaluation, theory, policy, capacity building, and practice the FCIC is committed to developing a range of supports and services in the areas of community supports, early childhood, transition, education, employment, health, interdisciplinary training, public policy, and cultural competence.
Principal Investigator: Lise Fox
Website: http://www.flcic.org

Florida Center for the Advancement of Child Welfare Practice

The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) has awarded a three-year, $3.7 million grant to CFS to develop Florida's Center for the Advancement of Child Welfare Practice, an innovative statewide informational web portal that offers up-to-date, comprehensive policy and practice information to advance the state's child welfare practice. Services will include a fully searchable online database built around current rules and policies, access to an interactive on-line information-sharing portal, and consultation to groups and individuals by a cadre of high-level national experts.
Principal Investigator: Donald Policella

Florida's Positive Behavior Support Project

This project is designed to enhance the capacities of school district personnel, including teachers, administrators, related service personnel, and behavior specialists, as well as family members and outside agency representatives to use positive, assessment-based approaches to appropriately address school-wide issues of behavior support, as well as to support students with disabilities who display significant behavior challenges in their school, home, and community settings.
Director: Don Kincaid
Website: http://flpbs.fmhi.usf.edu

Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY)

HIPPY is a home-based, early intervention/school readiness program that helps educationally disadvantaged parents provide educational enrichment for their preschool children aged 3-5. The HIPPY Training and Technical Assistance Center works in collaboration with HIPPY USA's national office in New York to provide training, technical support, and guidance to all HIPPY programs in the state of Florida.
Key Contact: Dabaram Rampersad
Website: http://floridahippy.fmhi.usf.edu/

National Center on Youth Transition

The Mission of the National Center on Youth Transition (NCYT) is to improve practices, systems, and outcomes for transition-age youth and young adults (14-25 years of age) with emotional and/or behavioral difficulties (EBD). NCYT actively conducts consultation, evaluation and other capacity building activities with personnel, youth, family members, and other stakeholders in communities, agencies, and states as they fully plan and implement transition supports and services across the transition domains of education, employment, living situation, personal adjustment, and community-life functioning.
Principal Investigator: Hewitt B. "Rusty" Clark
Website: http://ncyt.fmhi.usf.edu/index.cfm

National Implementation Research Network

The National Implementation Research Network is comprised of researchers, program developers and stakeholders interested in or engaged in the development, research, implementation and dissemination of evidence-based programs and practices. Network participants and activities span a variety of behavioral health initiatives, settings, programs and practices (e.g., adult/child, public/private/nonprofit, mental health, substance abuse, developmental disabilities, justice arenas, educational settings, child welfare, early intervention). With a strong science to practice and practice to science agenda, the National Implementation Research Network is focused on closing the gap between science and service and developing a science of program implementation and dissemination.
Principal Investigators: Dean Fixsen and Karen Blase
Website: http://nirn.fmhi.usf.edu/

Research and Demonstration Center on School-wide Behavior Support

The purpose of the Research and Demonstration Center on School-wide Behavior Support is to examine through experimental and programmatic research methods the effectiveness, efficiency, durability and relevance of school-wide behavior support in schools. This Center, led by researchers at the University of Oregon, is a collaborative effort among researchers and school-based implementers at the University of Missouri, the University of South Florida, the Hawaii Department of Education and the Illinois State Board of Education, and is funded by the US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
Key Contact: Don Kincaid
Website: http://www.uoecs.org/projects/researchcenterabstract.htm

Research and Training Center for Children's Mental Health

The Research and Training Center for Children’s Mental Health works to strengthen the empirical foundation for effective systems of care, and improve services for children with serious emotional or behavioral disorders and their families. Since 1984, the RTC has addressed this mission through an integrated set of research, training, consultation, and dissemination activities. Key activities include:

Practical, applied research on systems of care implementation, evaluation
Evaluation, technical Assistance & consultation to communities
Knowledge translation and transfer
Professional training and workforce development

Principal Investigator: Robert M. Friedman
Website: http://rtckids.fmhi.usf.edu/

USF Collaborative for Children, Families and Communities

The USF Collaborative brings together University faculty and students, nationally known researchers, community service organizations and professionals, youth, neighborhood activists, government officials and ordinary moms and dads to build a better Tampa Bay community. The Collaborative addresses issues as diverse as teen resilience, elder care, community assets, children’s literacy needs and family strengths through two Working Groups of faculty and community partners. Resilience and Protective Factors and Neighborhoods and Communities. The goal is to create sustained, collaborative relationships, where interdisciplinary teams work as co-learners in diverse settings. The Collaborative does not conduct any research itself. Instead, grants are awarded to faculty conducting interdisciplinary field research.
Key Contact: Judi Jetson
Website: http://www.usfcollab.usf.edu