Contemporary Issues In Child Welfare

Child welfare is the oldest specialization within social work practice and the only specialty area in which social work is the host profession. This edited volume provides a unique and comprehensive overview of practice issues relevant to contemporary child welfare professionals entering the field as well as those already working in direct service and management positions. This book’s emphasis on systemic, integrated, and evidence-informed practices at the individual, family, and organizational level is in keeping with child welfare’s core mission of child protection, family support, and permanency for youth. This volume also explores the challenges and opportunities present in a contemporary practice environment, which are driven by the attainment of defined outcomes, fiscal limitations, and the need for an informed professionalized child welfare workforce.

Literature in the child abuse and child protection arena has tended to adopt either a practice or legal perspective. Drawing on their expertise as researchers and leaders in their field, Julia Davison and Antonia Bifulco offer a comprehensive and cohesive book on child abuse and child protection, drawing on both criminological and psychological perspectives on all forms of child maltreatment and child protection practice together with impacts on the victims. This book considers a range of areas, from definitions of child abuse and discussions of its prevalence, to an examination of the experiences of children in care, to international perspectives on children within the criminal justice system, to the emergence of online child abuse and the increasing awareness of historical abuse. Each chapter draws together key elements in the field, including prevalence and definition, different disciplinary approaches; different practice challenges; international impacts; and technological issues. Brief case studies throughout the book reflect the voice or experience of the child, ensuring that the focus remains on the child at the centre of the abuse. Balancing coverage of theory and research and considering implications for practice and policy, this book will appeal to a range of disciplines, including criminology, psychology, psychiatry, social work and law.

Faced with rapidly changing social and economic conditions, service professionals, policy developers, and researchers have raised significant concerns about the Canadian child welfare system. This book draws inspiration from experiences with three broad, international child welfare paradigms—child protection, family service, and community healing/caring (First Nations)—to look at how specific practices in other countries, as well as alternative experiments in Canada, might foster positive innovations in the Canadian child welfare approach. Foundational values and purposes, systems design and policy, and organization and management are discussed, as are front-line service delivery, service provider work environments, and the realities of daily living for families. Informed by recent research, the contributors provide clear directions for policy, administration, and service-delivery reforms. Informing policy debates addressing child maltreatment and family welfare, this book will serve as a vital resource for managers, service providers, professionals, and students in the fields of social work, child and youth care, family studies, psychology, and special education.

This collection focuses on child welfare in its specific sense: welfare and social interventions with children and young people undertaken by State bodies or NGO's. The term 'child welfare' is deployed differently in diverse international settings. In the United Kingdom child welfare tends to refer to individualised programmes for children who have experienced problems in their lives. In India, to take a contrasting example, it can also refer to major housing and nutrition programmes. This collection takes an inclusive approach to international perspectives.The collection is completed by a new general introduction by the editor, individual volume introductions, and a full index.Titles also available in this series include, Medical Sociology (November 2004, 4 Volumes, 495) and the forthcoming collection Health Care Systems (2005, 3 Volumes, c.395).

Reorganized for more effective classroom use, the second edition of Critical Issues in Child Welfare begins with an updated, thorough overview of the challenges currently facing at-risk children and families. A description of the child welfare system highlights issues that are discussed in more detail throughout the book. The text explores protective services, family preservation, foster care and residential care, adoption, services for adolescents, and training and retention of staff. New material highlights the recent discoveries of the impact of early trauma and stress on children's development, and the modifications currently taking place in the child welfare system in response to this new information. The book also examines the critical challenges of poverty and substance abuse, the importance of the community in shaping child welfare services, racial disproportionality in the system, the changing response of the system to LGBT issues, and services to ameliorate the difficulties of youth leaving the system.

Caribbean Childhoods: From Research to Action is an annual publication produced by the Children s Issues Coalition at the University of the West Indies, Mona. The series seeks to provide an avenue for the dissemination of research and experiences on children s health, development, behaviour and education, and to provide a forum for the discussion of these issues.

Complex and knotted issues are untangled as author Renny Golden offers an incisive and detailed critical analysis of each arm of today's system, revealing a bureaucracy lurching from crisis to crisis and failing to keep children safe and whole. Tragedy, however, does not have the last word here. Drawing from the research of the family support movement and from community and youth development initiatives, Golden offers examples of innovative community-directed efforts to build the support necessary to prevent family and social breakdown.