Education And Child Welfare System Efforts To Improve Educational Outcomes For Youth In Foster Care

In this report, the authors examine how fragmentation within and misalignment between the education and child welfare systems influence opportunities for the cross-system collaboration needed to support students in foster care.

This book draws together for the first time some of the most important international policy practice and research relating to education in out-of-home care. It addresses the knowledge gap around how good learning experiences can enrich and add enjoyment to the lives of children and young people as they grow and develop. Through its ecological-development lens it focuses sharply on the experience of learning from early childhood to tertiary education. It offers empirical insights and best practices examples of learning and caregiving contexts with children and young people in formal learning settings, at home and in the community. This book is highly relevant for education and training programs in pedagogy, psychology, social work, youth work, residential care, foster care and kinship care along with early childhood, primary, secondary and tertiary education courses.

This text's premise is that not only do children and youth in foster care comprise a population very much at risk for school failure but also that this group of youngsters is perhaps the most educationally vulnerable population in our schools. Much needs to be done, in a comprehensive and co-ordinated way, if we are to give these individuals the opportunity for educational achievement. Case studies of very young children to young adults ready to emancipate from child protective services are interwoven throughout the volume to illustrate the significant barriers that put them at risk of educational failure.

EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN AND YOUTH, 5E, International Edition provides a concise yet complete introduction to special education for pre-service and in-service teachers. One of the most accessible and readable texts available for the Introduction to Special Education course, this new edition is thoroughly updated to reflect the most current information available about special education practice and children with exceptionalities. The text emphasizes current research and theory about exceptional children, human diversity, inclusion, law and social policy, family involvement, real-life stories about exceptionality, and evidence-based teaching practices—all presented in a warm, personal narrative style.

BSW/MSW education funded by Title IV-E of Social Security Act ("Title IV-E Child Welfare Education") is an important incentive to encourage social workers to stay in the child protection field. It aims to demonstrate the training partnership between universities and public child welfare agencies. This book contains essential research results with a focus on the impact of Title IV-E Child Welfare Education to improve worker capacities and case outcomes, as well as on the process and results of social work education in promoting public child welfare work. There are nine chapters written by renowned researchers in public child welfare who applied rigorous quantitative and/or qualitative methodologies to clearly describe measures used, data sources, outcome variables, and implications for education, practice, policy, and research. These evidence-based articles address the following child welfare topics: training partnerships and worker outcomes, effective pedagogy and online education, workplace climate and retention factors, and other topics connecting BSW/MSW education to public child welfare practice. Future child welfare education will need to further expand child welfare knowledge and skills, strengthen worker competencies with a strong commitment to social work values and ethical practice principles, and develop a cohesive supervisory network to build a workforce with positive attitude toward child protection programs. This collection will inform child welfare educators, administrators and legislators regarding the impact of Title IV-E Child Welfare Education on the development of public child welfare and make recommendations to improve the child welfare curriculum in social work education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Public Child Welfare.