Reforming Child Welfare In The Post Soviet Space

This book provides new and empirically grounded research-based knowledge and insights into the current transformation of the Russian child welfare system. It focuses on the major shift in Russia’s child welfare policy: deinstitutionalisation of the system of children’s homes inherited from the Soviet era and an increase in fostering and adoption. Divided into four sections, this book details both the changing role and function of residential institutions within the Russian child welfare system and the rapidly developing form of alternative care in foster families, as well as work undertaken with birth families. By analysing the consequences of deinstitutionalisation and its effects on children and young people as well as their foster and birth parents, it provides a model for understanding this process across the whole of the post-Soviet space. It will be of interest to academics and students of social work, sociology, child welfare, social policy, political science, and Russian and East European politics more generally.

This volume provides an understanding of how systems of child protection evolve in disparate cultural, social and economic contexts. Using the former Soviet Union as a starting point, it examines how 13 countries have developed, defined and evolved their system of protecting children and providing services to families over the last 25 years since independence. The volume runs an uniform approach in each country and then traces the development of unique systems, contributing to the international understanding of child protection and welfare. This volume is a fascinating study for social scientists, social workers, policy makers with particular interest to those focusing on children, youth, and family issues alike as each chapter offers a clear and compelling view of the central changes, competing claims and guiding assumptions that have formed each countries individual approach to child protection and family services.

"cross the spectrum of political ideologies there is, in principle, widespread agreement that the state has a legitimate role in protecting children from harm. Even the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman (1962), among the most ardent liberal supporters of the laissez faire philosophy, recognized this "paternalistic" function of government. At the same time, the traditional view of children, that they are the property of the father (pater) or the parents, is under pressure (Zelizer, 1994; James & Prout, 1997; Archard 2004). Societies are at an intersection when it comes to how children are treated and how their rights are respected, which creates tensions in the traditional relationship between the family and the state. Children are a focus of government responsibility under certain state-defined norms relating to harm and need. And parents are sometimes constrained by the state from exercising their (familial or property) rights under state-defined criteria of harm and need"--

Youth are usually not (yet) decision makers in politics or in business corporations, but the sustainability of Arctic settlements depends on whether or not youth envision such places as offering opportunities for a good future. This is the first multidisciplinary volume presenting original research on Arctic youth. This edited book presents the results of two research projects on youth wellbeing and senses of place in the Arctic region. The contributions are united by their focus on agency. Rather than seeing youth as vulnerable and possible victims of decisions by others, they illustrate the diverse avenues that youth pursue to achieve a good life in the Arctic. The contributions also show which social, economic, political and legal conditions provide the best frame for youth agency in Arctic settlements. Rather than portraying the Arctic as a resource frontier, a hotspot for climate change and a place where biodiversity and traditional Indigenous cultures are under threat, the book introduces the Arctic as a place for opportunities, the realization of life trajectories and young people’s images of home. Rooted in anthropology, the chapters also feature contributions from the fields of sociology, geography, sustainability science, legal studies and political science. This book is intended for an audience interested in anthropology, political science, Arctic urban studies, youth studies, Arctic social sciences and humanities in general. It would attract those working on Arctic sustainability, wellbeing in the Arctic, Arctic demography and overall wellbeing of youth.

Drawing on international case studies from emerging economies and developing countries including South Africa, India, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, Indonesia, China and Russia, this book examines the rise, nature and effectiveness of recent developments in social policy in the Global South. By analysing these new emerging trends, the book aims to understand how they can contribute to meaningful change and whether they could offer alternative solutions to the social, economic and environmental policy challenges facing low-income countries within a contemporary global context. It pays particular attention to reforms and innovations relating to the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the move away from a welfare state, towards a ‘welfare multitude’, in which new actors, such as civil society organisations, play an increasingly important role in social policy.

Examining the children of the Russian state, this volume details the years from 1917 to 1995. It surveys the social circumstances in Russia under the governance of Lenin, Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and investigates how these conditions affect childhood and adolescence.

This groundbreaking book provides a comprehensive account of social work, social welfare, and social development in Nigeria from a postcolonial perspective. It examines the historical development of social work and social welfare and the colonial legacies affecting contemporary social welfare provision, development planning, social work practice, and social work education. Against this historical backdrop, it seeks to understand the position of social work within Nigeria’s minimalist structure of welfare provision and the reasons why social work struggles for legitimacy and recognition today. It covers contexts of social work practice, including child welfare, juvenile justice, disabilities, mental health, and ageing, as well as areas of development-related problems and humanitarian assistance as new areas of practice for social workers, including internally displaced and trafficked people, and their impact on women and children. It seeks to understand Nigeria’s ethnoreligious diversity and indigenous cultural heritage to inform culturally appropriate social work practice. This book offers a global audience insight into Nigeria’s developmental issues and problems and a local audience – social science and human service researchers, educators, practitioners, students, and policymakers - a glimpse of what’s possible when people work together toward a common goal. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work, development studies and social policy.

This book seeks to trouble taken-for-granted assumptions of anthropocentrism and humanism in social work - those which perpetuate human privilege and human exceptionalism. The edited collection provides a different imaginary for social work by introducing ways of thinking otherwise that challenge human exceptionalism. Social work is at heart a liberal humanist project informed by a strong human rights framework. This edited collection draws on the literature on affect, feminist new materialism and critical posthumanism to critique the liberal framework, which includes human rights. Disrupting the anthropocentrism in social work which positions humans as an elite species at the centre of world history, this book develops an ethical sensibility that values entanglements of humans, non-human life and the natural environment. The book provides new insights into environmental destruction, human-animal relations, gender inequality and male dominance, as well as indigenous and settler/colonial issues and critical and green social work. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of social work, community development, social policy and development studies more broadly.