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Books > Law > Jurisprudence & general issues > Legal skills & practice > Advocacy
A History of Child Protection in America is the first comprehensive
history of American efforts to protect children from abuse and
neglect. The book begins in colonial times and chronicles child
protection into the twenty-first century. Among the important
nineteenth century events detailed in these pages are the rise of
orphanages for "dependent" children, the "orphan trains" operated
by the New York Children's Aid Society, the birth of the juvenile
court, the reforms of the Children's Progressive Era, and the
dramatic rescue of Mary Ellen Wilson, which led to the creation of
the world's first organization devoted entirely to child
protection, the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children. Twentieth century milestones include the gradual
transition from private child protection societies to government
operated child protection, the obscurity of child abuse from the
1920's to the 1960's, the "discovery" of child abuse in 1962, and
the creation of the child protection system we know today.
IIn 1973, a young ACLU attorney filed a controversial class-action lawsuit that challenged New York City’s operation of its foster-care system. The plaintiff was an abused runaway named Shirley Wilder who had suffered from the system’s inequities. Wilder, as the case came to be known, was waged for two and a half decades, becoming a battleground for the conflicts of race, religion, and politics that shape America’s child-welfare system.
The Lost Children of Wilder gives us the galvanizing history of this landmark case and the personal story at its core. Nina Bernstein takes us behind the scenes of far-reaching legal and legislative battles, but she also traces the life of Shirley Wilder and her son, Lamont, born when Shirley was only fourteen and relinquished to the very system being challenged in her name. Bernstein’s account of Shirley and Lamont’s struggles captures the heartbreaking consequences of the child welfare system’s best intentions and deepest flaws. In the tradition of There Are No Children Here, this is a major achievement of investigative journalism and a tour de force of social observation, a gripping book that will haunt every reader who cares about the needs of children.
This study on cross cultural perspectives in child advocacy deals
with various topics, including support for children's issues, the
factors that influence reporting of suspected child abuse and child
advocacy's application to education professionals. The study looks
at issues from around the world.
"I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations
between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their
children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years
old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get
my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they
were." For decades, advocates for refugee children and families
have fought to end the U.S. government's practice of jailing
children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened
immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby
Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip
G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University's asylum law
clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which
refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The
saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny
Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the
government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the
swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building
with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement
Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump
administration resorted to the forced separation of families after
the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children.
Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has
brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children.
Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle
between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the
duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety
in America.
The 1984 explosion of the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal,
India was undisputedly one of the world's worst industrial
disasters. Some have argued that the litigation following the
Bhopal disaster provided an "innovative model" for dealing with the
global distribution of technological risk; others consider the
disaster a turning point in environmental legislation; still others
argue that Bhopal is what globalization looks like on the ground.
Kim Fortun explores these claims by focusing on the dynamics and
paradoxes of advocacy in competing power domains. She moves from
hospitals in India to meetings with lawyers, corporate executives,
and environmental justice activists in the United States to show
how the disaster and its effects remain with us. Spiraling outward
from the gas victims' stories, Fortun's innovative narrative sheds
light on the complex intertwined way advocacy works within a global
system, calling into question conventional notions of
responsibility and ethical conduct. Revealing the hopes and
frustrations of advocacy, this moving work also counters the
tendency to think of Bhopal as an isolated incident that "can't
happen here."
Winner of The Nora and Ted Sterling Prize in Support of
Controversy, Simon Fraser University Originally approved as a
master of laws thesis by a respected Canadian university, this book
tackles one of the most compelling issues of our time--the crime of
genocide--and whether in fact it can be said to have occurred in
relation to the many Original Nations on Great Turtle Island now
claimed by a state called Canada. It has been hailed as
groundbreaking by many Indigenous and other scholars engaged with
this issue, impacting not just Canada but states worldwide where
entrapped Indigenous nations face absorption by a dominating
colonial state.Starblanket unpacks Canada's role in the removal of
cultural genocide from the Genocide Convention, though the
disappearance of an Original Nation by forced assimilation was
regarded by many states as equally genocidal as destruction by
slaughter. Did Canada seek to tailor the definition of genocide to
escape its own crimes which were then even ongoing? The crime of
genocide, to be held as such under current international law, must
address the complicated issue of mens rea (not just the commission
of a crime, but the specific intent to do so). This book permits
readers to make a judgment on whether or not this was the
case.Starblanket examines how genocide was operationalized in
Canada, focused primarily on breaking the intergenerational
transmission of culture from parents to children. Seeking to absorb
the new generations into a different cultural
identity--English-speaking, Christian, Anglo-Saxon, termed
Canadian--Canada seized children from their parents, and oversaw
and enforced the stripping of their cultural beliefs, languages and
traditions, replacing them by those still in process of being
established by the emerging Canadian state. She outlines the array
and extent of the destruction which inevitably took place as part
of the effort to bring about such a wrenching change--forcible
indoctrination by means of massive and widespread death by disease
and dilapidated living conditions, torture, forced starvation,
labor, and sexual predation--collateral damage to Canada's effort
to absorb diverse original nations into one larger, alien and
dominating body politic. The cumulative effects of genocide
continue to be exhibited by the survivors and their descendants who
suffer from the trauma and dysfunction, primarily in healthy proper
parenting, which results in ongoing forcible removals via the child
welfare systems to this day.
The removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from
their families gained national attention in Australia following the
Bringing Them Home Report in 1997. However, the voices of
Indigenous parents were largely missing from the Report. The
Inquiry attributed their lack of testimony to the impact of trauma
and the silencing impact of parents' overwhelming sense of guilt
and despair; a submission by Link-Up NSW commented on Aboriginal
mothers being "unwilling and unable to speak about the immense
pain, grief and anguish that losing their children had caused
them." This book explores what happened to Aboriginal mothers who
had children removed and why they have overwhelmingly remained
silent about their experiences. Identifying the structural barriers
to Aboriginal mothering in the Stolen Generations era, the author
examines how contemporary laws, policies and practices increased
the likelihood of Aboriginal child removal and argues that negative
perceptions of Aboriginal mothering underpinned removal processes,
with tragic consequences. This book makes an important contribution
to understanding the history of the Stolen Generations and
highlights the importance of designing inclusive truth-telling
processes that enable a diversity of perspectives to be shared.
This volume of the Research in Global Child Advocacy Series
explores participatory methodologies and tools that involve
children in research. Perspectives on the role of children have
transitioned from viewing children as objects of research, to
children as subjects of research, to acknowledgement of children as
competent contributors and agents throughout the inquiry process.
Researchers continue to explore approaches that honor the capacity
of children, drawing on diverse methodologies to elevate children's
voices and actively engage them in the production of knowledge.
Nonetheless, despite these developments, questions over the extent
to which children can be free of adult filters and influence merits
sustained scholarly attention. The book includes chapters that
critically examine methodological approaches that empower children
in the research process. Contributions include empirical or
practitioner pieces that operate from an empowerment paradigm and
demonstrate the agenic capacity of children to contribute their
perspectives and voices to our understanding of childhood and
children's lives. The text also features conceptual pieces that
challenge existing theoretical frameworks, critique research
paradigms, and analyze dilemmas or tensions related to ethics,
policy and power relations in the research process.
The 1984 explosion of the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal,
India was undisputedly one of the world's worst industrial
disasters. Some have argued that the litigation following the
Bhopal disaster provided an "innovative model" for dealing with the
global distribution of technological risk; others consider the
disaster a turning point in environmental legislation; still others
argue that Bhopal is what globalization looks like on the ground.
Kim Fortun explores these claims by focusing on the dynamics and
paradoxes of advocacy in competing power domains. She moves from
hospitals in India to meetings with lawyers, corporate executives,
and environmental justice activists in the United States to show
how the disaster and its effects remain with us. Spiraling outward
from the gas victims' stories, Fortun's innovative narrative sheds
light on the complex intertwined way advocacy works within a global
system, calling into question conventional notions of
responsibility and ethical conduct. Revealing the hopes and
frustrations of advocacy, this moving work also counters the
tendency to think of Bhopal as an isolated incident that "can't
happen here."
This book makes a critical case for advocacy in the lives of people
with learning difficulties. This can only be applauded.' -
Disability & Society 'I found this book to be a thoughtful,
interesting and challenging read and I would recommend it to anyone
working in the field of advocacy or involved in any capacity with
people with learning disabilities. It raises many questions about
advocacy in all its different forms and asks those of us involved
in this field to reflect on our own practice and that of our
funding bodies. It also challenges and invites reflection on
prevailing attitudes towards learning disability more generally and
the way in which services are provided. Finally it leaves the
reader in no doubt of the benefit and necessity of advocacy
services, to ensure that people with learning disabilities are able
to have their voices heard and their needs understood and met.'
-The British Journal of Developmental Disabilities 'This is
designed for advocacy practitioners and staff working in agencies
who come into contact with advocacy services. It is aimed at more
experienced practitioners, and service planners, who are serious
about developing effective advocacy services within a social
inclusion framework.' - Care and Health magazine 'This book
continues to raise questions about advocacy throughout. It asks
questions of those who are advocates and those who have the duty of
funding such services. It is a very thoughtful and practical
collection of essays on a whole range of issues and ranges, and
seeks to provide, some answers. In addition to all this, it is very
readable and provides a quite comprehensive bibliography, which in
itself is worth the cost of the book.' - Rostrum 'Advocacy and
Learning Disability is a sound collection of perspectives with an
interesting international flavour. Barry Gray and Robin Jackson
have collected insightful contributions from Britain, the USA, New
Zealand and Australia to create a useful overview exploring a very
wide range of self-advocacy issues directly related to learning
disability delivery.' -The British Journal of Special Education
Advocacy is a critically important element in the development of
effective services for people with a learning disability. It is
seen by many as the critical link between theory and practice in
creating a truly inclusive society. This book presents an in-depth
examination of the historical, legal and philosophical contexts
within which advocacy services have developed. The kind of
professional and practical issues and problems confronting those
running and using advocacy services are discussed, and the role of
advocacy is examined. Chapters covering advocacy with families and
with people with communication difficulties contain helpful
information for practitioners. A survey of the development of
advocacy services in the USA, Australia and New Zealand provides an
international perspective. Practical and informative, Advocacy and
Learning Disability will be essential reading for advocacy
practitioners and those working in agencies in the statutory and
voluntary sectors who come into contact with advocacy services.
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