Caring For Life is a charity that began in a Baptist church in Leeds and for twenty years has provided vulnerable young adults with the stability they need to rebuild their broken lives. It has nationally unrivalled success rates in preventing re-offending (85 per cent) and in obtaining long-term settled accommodation (98 per cent). Its focus, as its name suggests, is not on quick fixes, but lifelong support that makes the love of Jesus tangible for some of the most damaged young people. Some of the stories of abuse and deprivation in this book are a shocking indictment of today's affluent society, but dedicated pastoral care has produced many miracles of transformation. This is an inspiring account of faith in action, answered prayer, and the gospel being practiced, rather than preached. It is essential reading for all churches and agencies who work with the marginalized.

Child Health for All is a comprehensive manual addressing clinical, family, community, and health system aspects of child health aimed at health science students which includes medical, nursing, and allied disciplines.

Youth-led organizing, a burgeoning movement that empowers young people while simultaneously enabling them to make substantive contributions to their communities, is increasingly receiving attention from scholars, activists, and the media. Melvin Delgado and Lee Staples, recognized leaders in social work macro practice and community organization, have produced the first comprehensive study of this dynamic field. Their well-organized book takes an important step toward bridging the gap between academic knowledge and community practice in this growing area. The authors social justice-rooted perspective on the fields conceptual and practical foundations is an effective basis for analyzing youth-led community organizing, but they also offer glimpses of successful groups in action and helpful insight into how fledgling organizations can become stronger. These groups and their young participants represent the politics and activism of the future, and Delgado and Staples have produced a lucid, thoughtful guide to their key aspects and recent developments that students and researchers of community organization, not to mention the organizers and their facilitators themselves, are sure to find both inspiring and useful.

""This book should be available in every ward, clinic and department. ... This book is comprehensive and, that rare thing in nursing literature, scholarly and authoritative. ...reading this book should arm nurses with the understanding to effectively do their duty and safeguard children."
. Paediatric Nursing

. . "This text will be particularly useful... as a source of reference for all practitioners. It is logical, organised, comprehensive and accessible. If students wish to purchase one book - this would be a sound choice."
. Jan Nelmes, University of Brighton, UK

. . "I consider this a valuable book for all practitioners. While the author makes clear her intended audience, I think that a book of this quality would benefit a broader readership.
. Community Practitioner Magazine

" . . "Safeguarding Children and Young People, a Guide for Nurses and Midwives'" is an excellent book which I would have no hesitation in recommending to nursing and midwifery colleagues. It is both thought provoking and informative, providing what I consider to be a useful reference which can be utilised to help staff understand more clearly (and thus respond more confidently to) some of the challenging issues which can arise as a result of safeguarding work.
. Johann Knox, IC Electronic Bulletin"

. . . While many nurses and midwives are in an ideal position to prevent, identify and respond to child maltreatment, they may not currently have a clear understanding of the theory, policy and practice of safeguarding children. This book, which has been written specifically for a nursing and midwifery audience, provides an accessible text that outlines and explores professional roles andresponsibilities in the context of inter-agency working.

. . Importantly, it has chapters on: . . Child neglect. Fabricated or induced illness. Child death and child maltreatment. Safeguarding vulnerable children. . This groundbreaking book provides a much needed education, research, practice and evidence-based evaluation. The book also: . . Includes case examples and points for reflection. Provides an analysis of childrens rights and child protection . Enables readers to understand and apply theory and policy to practice . Outlines the roles and responsibilities of other agencies. Helps readers develop skills to deal with sensitive and traumatic issues. Addresses the importance of confidentiality and information sharing. . "Safeguarding Children and Young People" is core reading for all nursing and midwifery students and practitioners.

. . "This book provides a sound foundation, both for novices needing to understand the challenges of working to safeguard children and as a reference book for those with experience of working in this field.. . Dr Cheryll Adams, Acting Lead Professional Officer, Amicus-CPHVA. . .

Early childhood, from birth through school entry, was largely invisible worldwide as a policy concern for much of the twentieth century. Children, in the eyes of most countries, were 'appendages' of their parents or simply embedded in the larger family structure. The child did not emerge as a separate social entity until school age (typically six or seven). 'Africa's Future, Africa's Challenge: Early Childhood Care and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa' focuses on the 130 million children south of the Sahel in this 0-6 age group. This book, the first of its kind, presents a balanced collection of articles written by African and non-African authors ranging from field practitioners to academicians and from members of government organizations to those of nongovernmental and local organizations. 'Africa's Future, Africa's Challenge' compiles the latest data and viewpoints on the state of Sub-Saharan Africa's children. Topics covered include the rationale for investing in young children, policy trends in early childhood development (ECD), historical perspectives of ECD in Sub-Saharan Africa including indigenous approaches, new threats from HIV/AIDS, and the importance of fathers in children's lives. The book also addresses policy development and ECD implementation issues; presents the ECD programming experience in several countries, highlighting best practices and challenges; and evaluates the impact of ECD programs in a number of countries.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama in March 2010 is a landmark in U.S. social legislation, and the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the Act has ensured that it will remain the law of the land. The new law extends health insurance to nearly all Americans, fulfilling a century-long quest and bringing the United States to parity with other industrial nations. Affordable Care aims to control rapidly rising health care costs and promises to make the United States more equal, reversing four decades of rising disparities between the very rich and everyone else. Millions of people of modest means will gain new benefits and protections from insurance company abuses - and the tab will be paid by privileged corporations and the very rich. How did such a bold reform effort pass in a polity wracked by partisan divisions and intense lobbying by special interests? What does Affordable Care mean-and what comes next? In this updated edition of Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know (R), Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol-two of the nation's leading experts on politics and health care policy-provide a concise and accessible overview. They explain the political battles of 2009 and 2010, highlighting White House strategies, the deals Democrats cut with interest groups, and the impact of agitation by Tea Partiers and progressives. Jacobs and Skocpol spell out what the new law can do for everyday Americans, what it will cost, and who will pay. In a new section, they also analyze the impact the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law. Above all, they explain what comes next, as critical yet often behind-the-scenes battles rage over implementing reform nationally and in the fifty states. Affordable Care still faces challenges at the state level despite the Court ruling. But, like Social Security and Medicare, it could also gain strength and popularity as the majority of Americans learn what it can do for them.

"How to Reach 'Hard to Reach' Children" addresses core underlying difficulties affecting children and young people in the community and in schools, relating to underachievement, disengagement and school avoidance. It explores the consequences of school exclusion and the practices that can enhance the inclusion of pupils with social, emotional and behavioural needs. The book offers new and creative approaches to promoting multi-agency teamwork in relation to working with looked after children, refugees and asylum seekers and those with challenging behaviour and autism, and their families.

Its contribution is timely now that the government's new agenda 'Every Child Matters' is becoming a reality. Written by experts who have worked for many years with children and young people in an educational context, the book highlights the views of children, young people and their families. It gives a powerful insight as to how the government's five outcomes "can" be realised by children who are hard to see, hard to find, hard to engage, hard to manage, hard to change or retain within systems set up to help and educate them.

The emphasis throughout the book is of multidisciplinary teamwork, collaboration and the validation of children's views. It will show professionals how they can work most effectively for the benefit of children and young people, who are among the most vulnerable in our Society.

"The National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW) is the first nationally representative study of children who have been reported to authorities as suspected victims of abuse or neglect and the public programs that protect them. Child Protection is the first book that reports the results of NSCAW, interprets the findings, and puts them into a broader policy context. The authors, all experts in child welfare issues, address a range of issues made apparent by the survey results, including which types of personal and familial problems the programs are meant to address, the range of services and interventions that the child protection system can make available, and an assessment of these programs. Each chapter discusses the survey's implications and suggests new alternatives for designing and implementing future programs that not only protect at-risk children from further harm but also provide them with security and support. The practical lessons included in this volume make it an essential reference for all professionals working in the child protection field as well as anyone studying in the field of child welfare. "

The book is based on two research projects on emergency intervention, which were carried out by the author and her colleagues. The studies provide the basis for the three themes in the book: Inter-agency Working; Perceptions of Safety; and Placement and Resource Issues. The combination of quantitative and qualitative research allows a detailed picture of practice that goes beyond an account of what happens, to explore the perceptions, understandings and experiences of the practitioners who make these decisions, as social workers, police officers magistrates' legal advisers or magistrates, and of the lawyers who advise social workers and parents.

The book provides a critical account of current practice in emergency child protection, it identifies good practice and make proposals for reform.

Who will speak for the children? is the question posed by Judith S. Palfrey, a pediatrician and child advocate who confronts unconscionable disparities in U.S. health care -- a system that persistently fails sick and disabled children despite annual expenditures of $1.8 trillion.

In Child Health in America, Palfrey explores the meaning of advocacy to children's health and describes how health providers, community agencies, teachers, parents, and others can work together to bring about needed change. Palfrey presents a conceptual framework for child health advocacy consisting of four interconnected components: clinical, group, professional, and legislative. Describing each of these concepts in useful and compelling detail, she is also careful to provide examples of best practices.

This original and progressive work affirms the urgent need for child advocacy and provides valuable guidance to those seeking to participate in efforts to help all children live healthier, happier lives.

Child Welfare and the Law provides an overview of the child welfare and judicial systems in the USA. It examines the federal and state legislative and judicial foundations of modern child welfare practice; court decisions and their impact on the rights of birthparents, foster parents, and children; class action suits and their impact on child welfare; and the role of child welfare workers in the legal process. Appendices provide detailed instruction on conducting legal research and excerpts from a consent decree. The fully-updated third edition includes new chapters on adoption law and professional liability. The author has also expanded his original chapters on the rights of birth parents and foster parents and legal research strategies.

All too often child victims of abuse either remain silent or are not listened to when they do decide to speak of their experiences, but The Truth is Longer Than a Lie gives abused children and young people a voice. This groundbreaking book reveals what young victims have to say about abuse and its effects on their lives; their views on the reasons for abuse; their opinions of abusers and non-offending parents; and how they felt about disclosing their experiences. Significantly, this book provides important insights into children's perceptions of the professionals who intervened - to protect them, to prosecute the abuser or to provide therapeutic counselling. The authors examine societal factors that increase children's vulnerability, and propose measures for preventing abuse. They outline the requirements of ethically sound research, including appropriate interviewing techniques, and conclude with recommendations for future research. The Truth is Longer Than a Lie is invaluable reading for social workers, child protection workers, counsellors, legal professionals and anyone working with abused children.

In 1996, Democratic president Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress ""ended welfare as we know it"" and trumpeted ""workfare"" as a dramatic break from the past. But, in fact, workfare was not new. Jennifer Mittelstadt locates the roots of the 1996 welfare reform many decades in the past, arguing that women, work, and welfare were intertwined concerns of the liberal welfare state beginning just after World War II. Mittelstadt examines the dramatic reform of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) from the 1940s through the 1960s, demonstrating that in this often misunderstood period, national policy makers did not overlook issues of poverty, race, and women's role in society. Liberals' public debates and disagreements over welfare, however, caused unintended consequences, she argues, including a shift toward conservatism. Rather than leaving ADC as an income support program for needy mothers, reformers recast it as a social services program aimed at ""rehabilitating"" women from ""dependence"" on welfare to ""independence,"" largely by encouraging them to work. Mittelstadt reconstructs the ideology, implementation, and consequences of rehabilitation, probing beneath its surface to reveal gendered and racialized assumptions about the welfare poor and broader societal concerns about poverty, race, family structure, and women's employment.

Beyond childcare theories and early childhood gurus, here is how children have actually been raised in America over the last four centuries. From wet nurses and Southern mammys, settlement houses and orphan trains, to rigid British nannies, foster care, and the modern two-worker family, Geraldine Youcha's delightful book paints a wide-ranging picture of American childhood. In this updated paperback edition a lively new chapter brings the story through current childcare wars and present economic realities. All in all, it is a reassuring picture, for despite a bewildering array of different styles and fads, children have survived and often thrived. While there are some harsh lessons to be learned here, there is also plenty to lend optimism and help anxious parents relax.

Focusing on Alabama's textile industry, this study looks at the complex motivations behind the "whites-only" route taken by the Progressive reform movement in the South. In the early 1900s, northern mill owners seeking cheaper labor and fewer regulations found the South's doors wide open. Children then comprised over 22 percent of the southern textile labor force, compared to 6 percent in New England. Shelley Sallee explains how northern and southern Progressives, who formed a transregional alliance to nudge the South toward minimal child welfare standards, had to mold their strategies around the racial and societal preoccupations of a crucial ally--white middle-class southerners. Southern whites of the "better sort" often regarded white mill workers as something of a race unto themselves--degenerate and just above blacks in station. To enlist white middle-class support, says Sallee, reformers had to address concerns about social chaos fueled by northern interference, the empowerment of "white trash," or the alliance of poor whites and blacks. The answer was to couch reform in terms of white racial uplift--and to persuade the white middle class that to demean white children through factory work was to undermine "whiteness" generally. The lingering effect of this "whites-only" strategy was to reinforce the idea of whiteness as essential to American identity and the politics of reform. Sallee's work is a compelling contribution to, and the only book-length treatment of, the study of child labor reform, racism, and political compromise in the Progressive-era South.

Why are there proportionally more African American children in foster care than white children? Why are white children often readily adoptable, while African American children are difficult to place? Are these imbalances an indication of institutional racism or merely a coincidence? In this revised and expanded edition of the classic volume, Child Welfare, twenty-one educators call attention to racial disparities in the child welfare system by demonstrating how practices that are successful for white children are often not similarly successful for African American children. Moreover, contributors insist that policymakers and care providers look at African American family life and child-development from a culturally based Africentric perspective. Such a perspective, the book argues, can serve as a catalyst for creativity and innovation in the formulation of policies and practices aimed at improving the welfare of African American children. Child Welfare Revisited offers new chapters on the role of institutional racism and economics on child welfare; the effects of substance abuse, homelessness, HIV/AIDS, and domestic violence; and the internal strengths and challenges that are typical of African American families. Bringing together timely new developments and information, this book will continue to be essential reading for all child welfare policymakers and practitioners.

The South African Constitution declares, in the Bill of Rights, that every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health services and social services. The Bill of Rights also gives everyone, including children, rights to social security and basic education. Parents and the state, led by government, are the main players in translating children's rights into reality. But when parents are too poor or disadvantaged to do so, the state is legally obliged to step in. Over the first decade of democracy, the South African government made progress in rolling out services to poor people, including poor children, but poverty remains extensive. Monitoring Child Socio-Economic Rights in South Africa: Achievements and Challenges links the government's efforts to realise children's basic socio-economic rights to its legal obligations to do so, thereby aiming to contribute to eradicating child poverty in South Africa and ensuring that children live the quality of life they are entitled to.

"In We Are Not Babysitters, Mary Tuominen dispels not only myths about why women choose to be family child care providers and what it means to them, but also exposes how our social attitudes about care and our public child care policies shortchange these providers, most of whom are working mothers themselves with their own tenuous hold on self-sufficiency. A must read for policy makers, advocates, and practitioners."-Marcy Whitebook, founding executive director, Center for the Child Care Workforce (Washington, D.C.), and director, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, Berkeley "This book is a wonderful addition to the literature on care giving. We Are Not Babysitters provides an illuminating analysis of the relation between the larger values of society and the indifference to the needs of both the care receivers and care givers. Tuominen's sophisticated analysis creates a marvelously acute picture of the way family child care in the home is constructed and offered."-Arlene K. Daniels, professor emerita, Department of Sociology and Women's Studies, Northwestern University Using in-depth interviews with child care providers, Mary C. Tuominen explores the social, political, and economic forces and processes that draw women into the work of family child care. In We Are Not Babysitters, the lives and work of twenty family child care providers of diverse race, ethnicity, immigrant status, and social class serve as a window into understanding the changing meanings of community, family, work, and care. Their stories require us to rethink the social and economic value of paid child care providers and their work. Mary C. Tuominen is an associate professor of sociology/anthropology and women's studies at Denison University, Granville, Ohio and the co-editor of Child Care and Inequality.

Published in association with Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development Child labour has become a hot issue. International attention has often been focused on South Asia, and initiatives have been undertaken to use pro-active policies, such as a trade boycott, to pressurise governments in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh to implement a complete ban on child labour and to realize universal education. A gathering of outstanding international scholars, financed by the Indo-Dutch Programme on Alternatives in Development, has discussed these issues on the basis of empirically grounded research papers. A selection of these papers has been edited for this volume. The volume contains papers on the extent of child labour in South Asia (and the spread across regions and sectors), its correlation with education, some of the worst forms of child labour, and best practices. The papers are a good mix of social anthropology, economics and political science approaches. The expertise of the contributors and their concern for what continues to be a stark reality in South Asia make this book an invaluable source of reference on the issue of child labour, academically rigorous and politically relevant. It will be highly relevant to policy makers, scholars, journalists and practitioners.

Three to five per cent of children fail to thrive. Without early intervention this can lead to serious growth failure and delayed psychomotor development.
Such children typically present difficulties with feeding and sleeping, as well as other behavioural problems. Failure to grow can also involve attachment disorders, emotional maltreatment, neglect, and abuse.
Dorota Iwaniec has carried out the longest ever study on failure to thrive, following up on 198 clinical cases after a 20-year period. This extensive practical guide includes: numerous checklists and other instruments for use in assessmentsfour chapters on intervention and treatments, with a particular focus on multidisciplinary approachesa comprehensive literature review alongside original research datacase studies drawn from the author's lengthy clinical experienceThis book is essential reading for social workers, health visitors, nurses, pediatricians, psychologists and child care workers.

In recent years, childhood studies has become an increasingly popular programme at colleges and universities. This broad-ranging guide has been designed for use on such courses and introduces students to the key issues in the study of childhood, from infancy through to adulthood.

The text approaches childhood studies from an interdisciplinary and multi-professional perspective, presenting the basics of psychology, social welfare, education, health, law, culture, rights, politics and economics as they relate to children. For each discipline, the role of relevant professionals, such as social workers, nursery teachers, paediatric nurses and child lawyers, is also considered. The contributors have both practical and academic backgrounds in a range of specialist areas.To support student learning, each chapter includes an independent learning activity, case studies and an annotated bibliography, and there is a glossary of technical terms at the back of the book.

This book on the state of children in India gives a comprehensive overview of the development of Indias young human resource after Independence. It is a departure from earlier publications on child development which have dwelt on specific child development issues indicating the schemes implemented, and the monies spent. The text of this publication brings together different sectors of child development for an integrated view. It takes stock of the promises that were made by the Constitution for the development of children, the policy statements enunciated from time to time, and the five year development plans. The publication gives a quantitative analysis of current outcomes and the unfinished agenda. The book reviews the achievements and failures so that child development concerns and future strategies can be seen in a realistic manner. It is aimed at the general reader interested in child development so that the key concerns are better understood. It will be of great value of policy makers, administrators, non-governmental organizations, academicians, social activists and media personnel for discussion, debate and action, and for assessing funding requirements for child development programmes.