In today 's fast-paced, often-dehumanizing world, this book brings together the advice and expertise of leading scholars dedicated to affecting positive youth development. Providing a multifaceted, multidisciplinary blueprint for social change the book promotes individual adult involvement in adolescents lives to ensure positive youth development. It aims to mobilize a society of adults, through volunteer and other programs, and will interest anyone involved in working toward achieving positive youth development.

Many policy and practice initiatives that aim to prevent social exclusion focus on children and young people. This book seeks to consider new approaches to understanding the complexities of prevention, and how these new understandings can inform policy and practice. The authors use evidence from the National Evaluation of the Children's Fund to illustrate and explore the experiences of children and families who are most marginalised. They consider the historical context of approaches to child welfare, and present a new framework for understanding and developing preventative polices and practice within the context of social exclusion. Preventative initiatives such as the Children's Fund have supported large-scale complex evaluations that have generated rich and important data about strategies for addressing social exclusion and what they can achieve. The findings of this book have direct relevance for all those engaged in developing preventative policy and practice and will therefore be of interest to policy makers, practitioners and students of child welfare and social policy more broadly, in providing a timely discussion of key debates in designing, delivering and commissioning preventative services.

The five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, are well-known for their extensive welfare system and gender equality which provides both parents with opportunities to earn and care for their children. In this topical book, expert scholars from the Nordic countries, as well as UK and the US, demonstrate how modern fatherhood is supported in the Nordic setting through family and social policies, and how these contribute to shaping and influencing the images, roles and practices of fathers in a diversity of family settings and variations of fatherhoods. This comprehensive volume will have wide international appeal for those who look to Nordic countries and their success in creating gender equal societies.

This practice-oriented text presents evidence-based assessment methods and interventions that have been extensively field-tested in child welfare settings. The contributors offer empirical and field insights, comprehensive treatment models, and curricula in key areas such as child maltreatment, substance abuse, parent training, social skills, and youth employment interventions. For the professional reader, the book offers real-world guidance on social work practice, from hiring opportunities within a system to promoting lasting change as families and their issues grow increasingly complex. These chapters also take significant steps toward future improvements in child protection systems as the field evolves toward being more coordinated, effective, and professional. Included in the coverage: Legal requisites for social work practice in child abuse and neglect. The integrated model for human service delivery in child welfare. Risk assessment: issues and implementation in child protective services. Substance use and abuse: screening tools and assessment instruments. The process of intervention with multi-problem families. Preventative services for children and adolescents. Its multi-level approach makes Evidence-Informed Assessment and Practice in Child Welfare an essential professional development text for social workers, particularly those new to the job, as well as a progressive blueprint for social work administrators.

"Shadow Mothers" shines new light on an aspect of contemporary motherhood often hidden from view: the need for paid childcare by women returning to the workforce, and the complex bonds mothers forge with the "shadow mothers" they hire. Cameron Lynne Macdonald illuminates both sides of an unequal and complicated relationship. Based on in-depth interviews with professional women and childcare providers-- immigrant and American-born nannies as well as European au pairs--"Shadow Mothers" locates the roots of individual skirmishes between mothers and their childcare providers in broader cultural and social tensions. Macdonald argues that these conflicts arise from unrealistic ideals about mothering and inflexible career paths and work schedules, as well as from the devaluation of paid care work.

Based on internationally discussed theories and worldwide social research on the conceptualisation and implementation of children's rights, this book gives an insight into new perspectives on the different concepts of children's rights in a contextualised and localised manner.

Policy reforms to children's services in the UK and elsewhere encourage a greater focus on outcomes defined in terms of child well-being. Yet for this to happen, we need not only a better understanding of what child well-being is and how services can improve it, but also the ability to measure child well-being in order to evaluate success. This book investigates the main approaches to conceptualising child well-being, applies them to the child population using household survey and agency audit data, then considers the implications for children's services. The author: provides a clear conceptual understanding of five perspectives on well-being: need, rights, poverty, quality of life and social exclusion demonstrates the value of each perspective charts levels of child well-being in an inner-London community, including violated rights and social exclusion sets out the features that children's services must have if they are to improve child well-being defined in these terms This book should be read by everyone involved in developing, implementing and evaluating children's services, including researchers, policy makers and practitioners.

Adoption, Race, and Identity examines the innovative placement of nonwhite (predominantly black) adoptees with white parents. In addition to reviewing recent court decisions involving race as a factor in child custody, authors Rita Simon and Howard Altstein examine the research to date on this topic, including adoption policy and practice as carried out by some adoption agencies. Although there are a few anecdotal portraits of typical situations, the work is almost exclusively devoted to actual responses to questions about the experiences of these families based on a longitudinal study that began in 1971. The authors conclude that the majority of families and their adopted children are well integrated into society and that the adoptees now, as adolescents, do not see themselves as any less black than their in-racially raised peers.

Chapters 1 and 2 examine the historical and legal background of transracial adoption. The authors discuss numbers and trends, founding social movements, agency practices, and the legal status of transracial adoption over the past forty years. They present the arguments by the National Association of Black Social Workers against the practice, and responses offered by various adoption networks. Chapter 3 details the authors' research method for the study of families and their transracial adoptees, and integrates a review of the research literature. The following chapter provides demographic and social psychological data on the 200 families involved in the study, and examines their stated reasons for adopting. Chapters 5 and 6 evaluate the responses to the study by parents and by adoptees and their siblings. Chapter 7 reviews the families' experiences from both the parents' and children's perspectives, and Chapters 8 and 9 discuss problem families and ordinary families, respectively. The work closes with an examination of alternative forms of child placement, a discussion of social policy, and suggestions for future research and practice. This study will prove valuable to social workers, adoption agencies, and scholars and practitioners in related fields.

Although the subject of children's rights and the sociology of childhood and child sexual abuse has been the subject of extensive scholarly deliberation and commentary, there has been very little consideration of the way networks and digital information create a trust deficit, which consequently implicates all non-State actors and civil society. There is a need to understand the dynamics of the multi-stakeholder Internet governance model and the challenges Web 2.0 technologies pose for child protection policy-making. This book fills the lacuna. "Online Child Safety: Law, Technology and Governance "directs its focus on the governance challenges raised by the problems of ascertaining the integrity, authenticity and reliability of information flows and network infrastructures for our attitudes towards risks facing children and strategies for enhancing their safety in the online environment. It also seeks to understand the nature of convergence and articulates the significance of emerging regulatory trends in the way compliance with child safety norms are defined, communicated and enforced.

This book provides a unique perspective on addressing issues of various forms of violence against children from scholars within their own country. Bringing together cross-disciplinary expertise, this volume addresses a vast range of topics related to child abuse and neglect in Uganda. Exploring areas from the protection of street children to cultural proverbs related to child maltreatment, this volume examines issues both specific to the Ugandan contexts as well as broadly experienced in child maltreatment work in non-Euro-American countries. This book surveys the breadth of the child protection field, covering issues of children's universal rights, challenges of protection and ethical quandaries in researching and addressing maltreatment.

Divided into six parts, this substantive reference work charts how childhood studies has moved beyond developmental issues to focus on broader issues of children in society, as actors and agents, and as subjects of policy intervention. It is a comprehensive overview of key theoretical and empirical work in the field of childhood studies.

Maya Ajmera and Greg Fields provide the architecture of a new perspective on the global agenda for children, based on a new global web of relationships stemming from the community level. Arguing that the existing global agenda for children has failed, this book reimagines how society can support the world's most vulnerable children. In doing so, Invisible Children identifies and gives voice to the millions of children globally living on society's margins, while showing a way forward as to how we can best invest in children.

Due to the demand for flexible working hours and employees who are available around the clock, the time patterns of childcare and schooling have increasingly become a political issue. Comparing the development of different 'time policies' of half-day and all-day provisions in a variety of Eastern and Western European countries since the end of World War II, this innovative volume brings together internationally known experts from the fields of comparative education, history, and the social and political sciences, and makes a significant contribution to this new interdisciplinary field of comparative study.

The 20th century, declared at its start to be the "Century of the Child" by Swedish author Ellen Key, saw an unprecedented expansion of state activity in and expert knowledge on child-rearing on both sides of the Atlantic. Children were seen as a crucial national resource whose care could not be left to families alone. However, the exact scope and degree of state intervention and expert influence as well as the rights and roles of mothers and fathers remained subjects of heated debates throughout the century. While there is a growing scholarly interest in the history of childhood, research in the field remains focused on national narratives. This volume compares the impact of state intervention and expert influence on theories and practices of raising children in the U.S. and German Central Europe. In particular, the contributors focus on institutions such as kindergartens and schools where the private and the public spheres intersected, on notions of "race" and "ethnicity," "normality" and "deviance," and on the impact of wars and changes in political regimes.

The war against child abuse has become a war against children. Every year, hundreds of children die, thousands more are forced to live with strangers, and countless American families are torn apart. This is called a "child-protection system."
While the problem of child abuse is serious and real, journalist Richard Wexler charges that our solutions to the problem have actually made it worse - in fact, hurting the very children that they were intended to help.
Wexler reinforces his arguments with horrifying descriptions of children summarily removed from their homes, of families shattered because of false reports, and of children whose parents are guilty of nothing more than poverty being thrust into the maelstrom of the chaotic foster-care program. He writes of severly abused children - those needing the most help - whose cases are ignored because the system diverts scarce resources to trivial or unfounded cases, and who are reinjured, sometimes fatally after their plight has been called to the attention of authorities.
Wounded Innocents illustrates how well-meaning efforts to help children have gone terribly wrong and how the current child-protection system desperately needs to be replaced with one that offers real help and real hope to abused and neglected children.

This book presents and illustrates the perspectives and roles of six disciplines on a multidisciplinary child-protection team. It is intended to be used as part of the academic preparation for professionals from the respective disciplines who are interested in working in the field of child abuse and neglect. It includes educational, legal, nursing, medical, psychological, and social work perspectives and principles, and practice for team development.

Chapter 1 discusses the history of multidisciplinary teams in child welfare services. Chapter 2 focuses on the organization and structure of child abuse and neglect services and the functions of the social worker within this service system. Chapter 3 presents the medical aspects of the multidisciplinary team approach in diagnosing, discussing, evaluating, and analyzing cases. Chapter 4 delineates the role of professional psychology in the prevention, assessment, and treatment of child abuse and neglect cases. Chapter 5 begins with an explanation of the importance of the law, which provides remedy by punishing the abuser or placing the child in a safe and nurturing home. Chapter 6 provides knowledge and understanding of the legal status of educators as related to child abuse and neglect. In Chapter 7, the use of the nursing process in practice with abusive and neglectful families is outlined. Particular attention is paid to the identification of assessment warning signs that can indicate potential or actual abuse. Chapter 8 outlines strategies for team development, emphasizing team process, which includes communication, decision making, and conflict management. Emphasis is placed on clarifying roles, structure, and format of various types of teams.

Olivia Golden considers how innovative and effective help for poor children can emerge from the world of big bureaucratic systems. She asks why the nation's public welfare agencies, despite the large number of children in the families they serve, have paid so little attention to children's needs; and she analyzes what it would take for these agencies to respond much more richly to children and their families. Drawing on the approaches of seven successful programs from across the country, she offers answers and recommendations suggesting that under the right circumstances, welfare agencies can become catalysts for change on behalf of children, both by expanding their own services and by reaching out to other agencies in the community.

The extensive recommendations for making the welfare system a source of support and early attention to children and families offer practical insights for advocates, policy makers, and public officials at the national, state, and community levels. The recommendations also provide a source of ideas for advocates, researchers, and policy makers who want to point other large public bureaucracies towards services that are integrated, comprehensive, and responsive to families and to encourage collaboration in a form that will truly make a difference in the daily lives and experiences of poor families. This book shows how to make a start on this necessary, although challenging, effort.

In a world dominated by poverty, a central characteristic has been the plight of orphans and abandoned children. Over the centuries, State, Church and individuals have all attempted to tackle the issue, but can we trace any change over the course of time when it comes to the welfare system intended for these disadvantaged children and acts of philanthropy? What kind of social policies did States follow and what were the main differences between countries and regions? Drawing on historical evidence across several centuries and a range of European countries, the contributors to this volume provide a transnational overview.

This original book explores the importance of geographical processes for policies and professional practices related to childhood and youth. Contributors from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds explore how concepts such as place, scale, mobility and boundary-making are important for policies and practices in diverse contexts. Chapters present both comprehensive cutting-edge academic research and critical reflections by practitioners working in diverse contexts, giving the volume wide appeal. The focus on the role of geographical processes in policies and professional practices that affect young people provides new, critical insights into contemporary issues and debates. The contributions show how local and national concerns remain central to many youth programmes; they also highlight how youth policies are becoming increasingly globalised. Examples are taken from the UK, the Americas and Africa. The chapters are informed by and advance contemporary theoretical approaches in human geography, sociology, anthropology and youth work, and will be of interest to academics and higher-level students in those disciplines. The book will also appeal to policy-makers and professionals who work with young people, encouraging them to critically reflect upon the role of geographical processes in their own work.

The number of children living in families with incomes below the federal poverty level increased by 33 percent between 2000 and 2009, resulting in over 15 million children living in poverty. Some of these children are able to overcome this dark statistic and break the intergenerational transmission of poverty, offering hope to an otherwise bleak outlook, but this raises the question-how? In Fostering Resilience and Well-Being in Children and Families in Poverty, Dr. Valerie Maholmes sheds light on the mechanisms and processes that enable children and families to manage and overcome adversity. She explains that research findings on children and poverty often unite around three critical factors related to risk for poverty-related adversity: family structure, the presence of buffers that can protect children from negative influences, and the association between poverty and negative academic outcomes, and social and behavioral problems. She discusses how the research on resilience can inform better interventions for these children, as poverty does not necessarily preclude children from having strengths that may protect against its effects. Importantly, Maholmes introduces the concept of "hope" as a primary construct for understanding how the effects of poverty can be ameliorated. At the heart of the book are interviews with family members who have experienced adversity but managed to overcome it through the support of targeted programs and evidence-based interventions. Student leaders provide unique perspectives on the important role that parents and teachers play in motivating youth to succeed. Finally, professionals who work with children and families share their observations on effective interventions and the roles of culture and spirituality in fostering positive outcomes. Excerpts from these interviews bring research to life and help call attention to processes that promote hope and resilience. This book will be invaluable for policymakers, educators, and community and advocacy groups, as well as scholars and students in family studies, human development, and social work.

Today in the United States there is a lack of consensus about what constitutes ethical practice in adoption. Although ethics in adoption is a hot topic, adoption specialists and professionals are unsure about how to serve the best interests of children who need to be adopted and how birth parents, adoptive parents, and adult adoptees ought to be served. This failure to identify and prioritize ethical standards in adoption has resulted in a lack of ethical decision-making and inadequate--and sometimes fraudulent--treatment of those seeking adoption-related services.

Destined to be seminal in the fields of ethics and adoption, this books offers numerous case studies describing what is wrong with America's adoption system, illustrating what the lack of applied ethical standards in adoption does to adoptees and those who love them, and raising many questions about what adoption facilitators are doing, who is accountable for what they are doing, and whose interests they are serving.

During psychoanalysis as a young adult, the author was treated by an analyst who distorted, misunderstood, and misinterpreted painful childhood events. In a successful second analysis, Dr. Schave was able to uncover forgotten memories of sexual abuse, buried from her conscious awareness for over 35 years. The author's emotional contact with the realities of her traumatic past led to a healing process, and as Dr. Schave understood and overcame her childhood experiences, she was better able to treat other survivors of sexual abuse. Schave's story is vitally important to other survivors because it is a first person account that details the recovery process. In a compelling manner, she relates what she can remember of her abuse and more importantly, how she came to realize she was not a damaged person. Incest is taboo in our culture, making it a difficult subject to discuss. For this and other reasons, not much is known about how to treat survivors. With her hard-won personal and professional insights, Dr. Schave explores various treatment options, focusing on the crucial importance of sensitivity, honesty, and equal partnership between therapist and patient. She leads survivors of sexual abuse through phases of therapy that include the toleration of feelings, reduction of stress, uncovering forgotten memories, confrontation, and integrating the trauma. This is a unique and hopeful book. abuse is important for its first-person account

The volume contains a collection of papers presented at the Fourth International Symposium of the Special Research Unit Prevention and Intervention in Childhood and Adolescence at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research of the University of Bielefeld, in December 1988. The theoretical discussion

This book explores the management of children's services in local authorities across England and Wales. It examines residential childcare from a management and organizational perspective for the first time. The volume evaluates how social services manage residential units and offers alternative solutions. The book will interest academics, practitioners and policy makers who work in the public sector, as well as their counterparts from outside who are concerned with the issues of control, implementation, professionals and markets.