The book linked below, dated March 2007 is authored by:

Hon. Margaret Norrie McCain
J. Fraser Mustard
Sr. Stuart Shankar

This book was published by the Council for Early Child Development, 277-401 Richmond Street West. Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5V 3A8
www.councilecd.ca
Email: cecd_general@councilecd.ca

 In an excerpt from the page, “A Message from the Authors”, J. Fraser Mustard notes:
We now understand how early child and brain development sets trajectories in the health, learning and behaviour for life.  How we apply this knowledge in our various societies will determine whether we will be successful in the 21st century.
To establish stable, prosperous, equitable societies, we have to make equality of opportunity for all young children a key policy of our societies.

To link to this study click here: fraser-mustard-margaret-mccain-early-years-study-2.pdf

The excellent 40 page article linked below is sourced from the  Australian Journal of Early Childhood 30(2), 29-39

The authors are Associate Professor Margaret Sims, Dr Andrew Guilfoyle and Professor Trevor Parry.

Abstract
The Australian childcare profession has watched with some concern results of research coming out of North America, indicating that child care is not good for children.  This research identifies undesirable outcomes in children’s development and behaviour as a result of child care attendance.  How does this research apply to Australian children in Australian child care centres?  Australian research is limited and this paper reports on results to date of an Australian study of children’s biological stress levels (measured using salivary cortisol) and their relationship with quality child care service delivery.  Results demonstrate clearly that children attending high quality child care have lower stress levels across the day than children attending satisfactory or unsatisfactory programmes.  Poor quality child care is not good for children.

Click on this link to see the pdf file:  what-childrens-cortisol-levels-tell-us-about-quality.pdf

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook
Authors: Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D. and Maia Szalavitz
New York: Basic Books 2007.

In this elegantly and sensitively written book, Dr. Bruce Perry does for child psychiatry what Oliver Sacks has done for neurology*.  Perry and his co-author make accessible to the general reader both the science and the art of working as a mental health therapist with some of the most vulnerable members of our societies. The cases let us enter not only the lives of the terribly damaged children that are described, but also the detailed clinical thinking of someone whose deep-seated humanity has allowed him to make the very best use of the most up-to-date brain science, to which he has also contributed. As such it is as much intellectual history as it is case-study, and all the stronger for it.

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