Pre-school childcare in England, 1939-2010 investigates how competing ideas about child development influenced the provision, practice and experience of childcare for the under fives since 1939. It explores how theories which developed during the war about the psychological harm caused by separating an infant from its mother influenced the organisation of childcare outside the family in light of the social, economic and demographic changes seen during the years that followed. Focusing on four different forms of childcare - day nurseries, nursery schools and classes, playgroups, and childminders - it considers how both individual families and wider society managed the care of young children in the context of dramatic increases in the employment of married women. Using a new body of oral history interviews specifically undertaken for the book, it also examines the experiences and effects of care on those involved and the current policy implications raised. -- .

This foundational resource is the first to explicitly detail the Child and Youth Care (CYC) core competencies for students preparing to take the Child and Youth Care-Professional (CYC-P) certification exam. Designed according to the Child and Youth Care Certification Board (CYCCB), this book offers a comprehensive review of the five domains of CYC practitioner competencies: professionalism, cultural and human diversity, applied human development, relationship and communication, and developmental practice methods. Pedagogical tools bring concepts to life through critical discussion and reflection. The text is packed with tables, chapter learning outcomes, reflection questions, end-of-chapter reference lists, glossary terms, definitions from the CYCCB, and real world case studies. A unique and practical textbook, this is an indispensable resource for introductory courses in child and youth care programs.

Exploring specific experiences, circumstances and events that can put children at risk, this book provides practical guidance for early years practitioners working with vulnerable children. It covers supporting children who are abused and neglected, those with special educational needs, children from ethnic minorities, those with emotional or health difficulties, children affected by poverty and children in care. Each chapter draws on current research and theories to set out clear advice and strategies for supporting the wellbeing and development of vulnerable children, including working in partnership with parents, carers and communities.

The Child Support Enforcement Handbook provides students with an historical overview of child support and enforcement, including relevant federal and state legislative and statutory schemes. Decades of state and federal legislation, and their varying impacts, are presented to help readers decode this complex multibillion-dollar governmental enterprise. The handbook begins by detailing the history of child support and enforcement and providing readers with a solid grounding in the various models and formulas used by states to determine the appropriate amount of child support in individual cases. Readers learn about the disparate impact of child support enforcement on families at the lowest socioeconomic levels and its importance in supporting the day-to-day livelihood of low-income parents. Additional chapters examine child support enforcement procedures, as well as challenges and issues that arise with enforcement, including paternity testing and presume parentage, same-sex parenting, assisted reproductive technology, and more. Designed to help readers navigate an important and complex system, The Child Support Enforcement Handbook is an ideal resource for courses in family law, social work, counseling, and accounting. It can also serve as a helpful reference for practicing attorneys and those in helping professions.

The Child Welfare System: Perspectives, Challenges and Future Directions opens with a description of the empirical results of a study on bird's nest parenting as a form of shared parenting. Bird's nest parenting ensures that children have both a stable home with the continuity of their prior lifestyle and the chance to live everyday life with both parents. Next, the authors report the findings of child protection workers' experiences with and perspectives on child engagement in the context of child protection assessment in Estonia. Child protective workers make difficult decisions that affect the everyday lives of children and their families, including removing children and dismantling families, and therefore careful and comprehensive assessment is one of the most significant challenges in the field. The closing chapter considers the connection between agency practices and environments on child outcomes such as length of time spent in foster care, placement changes, and child mental health.

A pivotal textbook in the field, this comprehensive collection is the first of two volumes that cross-examine all active child and youth care sectors across the human services. Co-editors Kiaras Gharabaghi and Grant Charles bring together world-renowned professionals, academics, and researchers to address the past, present, and future state of child and youth care. Guiding students through the exploration of a growing field, this volumes examines practice in a range of service sectors including residential care, foster homes, schools, cyberspace, outdoor adventure settings, and services that support Quebecois, deaf, autism, and LGBTQ+ communities. With a strong foundation in Canadian scholarship, this text also draws connections to child and youth care practice in a global context. International and Canadian students, scholars, and practitioners in child and youth care will benefit from this extensive and timely resource. Features includes contributions from leading Canadian scholars, researchers, and professionals in the field of child and youth care analyzes the challenges, opportunities, and employment prospects in each sector establishes connections between chapters by cross-referencing the sectors, geographical regions, and contexts of other chapters

Failure-to-protect policies and practices are intended to better ensure the safety and protection of children. But as this book demonstrates, these policies actually increase danger for children -- and for their mothers. While failure to protect is not always encoded in policy documents, practices that engage mothers and hold them responsible for violence in the home, while excusing or ignoring the male offender, are common. Moreover, these actions most often play out on the shoulders of marginalized and already oppressed women and, in a cruel twist, place blame on mothers because they are "unable" to protect their children from factors beyond their control, such as poverty, racism, intimate partner violence and inadequate housing. In this book, writers from Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia explain how the concept of failure to protect emerged and how it differentially impacts child welfare clients by virtue of their gender, race and class positions. Chapters dedicated to child sexual abuse and intimate partner abuse, for example, illustrate just how ineffective failure-to-protect policies are at protecting both women and children. Beyond a critique of child protection systems, the book proposes innovative and effective alternatives to policies and practices informed by failure to protect. This edited collection compels us to think critically about knowledge that is taken for granted and opens up possibilities for practices that are not only grounded in social justice but fulfill the mandate of child welfare to effectively protect children.

This is a book of real life stories of adopters which takes the reader through every stage of the adoption process starting with the moment when they decide that adoption is the right option for them to the stories of adoptees brought up by adoptive parents.

In between, the book looks at all the different types of adoption that are carried out by all sorts of families from all sorts of children of every race and age and with every kind of problem. They range from babies who are only a few days old when they are taken into an adoptive family to teenagers with a multitude of psychological and physical problems. The book looks at both the success and failure of these adoptions.

Its aim is to inform and enlighten professionals, adopters, potential adopters and all those lives have in some way been touched by adoption or want to know more about it.

In 15 chapters it includes more than 70 real life stories which are all told from the heart -- sometimes in a moment of crisis and sometimes at a time of joy. They are not analyzed; they are true stories about how it feels to be at the center of adoption. All the stories, which have been recounted over the past 10 years, are reflective of adoption today in Britain.

The book also includes a chapter on the legal aspects of adoption and a further chapter of useful information and addresses.

Residential care and treatment for children and youth remain ubiquitous across Canada in spite of frequent critiques and an ideology of constructing group care as a last resort. In the first book of its kind, Dr. Kiaras Gharabaghi argues that the absence of a unifying theory or conceptual idea(s) pursuant to residential care and treatment perpetuate dynamics of mediocrity and complacency toward inadequate standards and practices. Drawing on organizational examples from across Canada, Gharabaghi re-constructs the possibilities for this form of care as a space for healing, growth, and the promotion of autonomy for young people. This well-timed resource offers the child and youth services community a positive, constructive, and revolutionary framework for residential care and treatment that is fundamentally based on a partnership between caregivers and young people, their families, neighbourhoods, and communities. Dr. Gharabaghi's sophisticated and provocative analysis of the system's key issues is essential reading for students, practitioners, and educators in the field of child and youth care and in the human services more broadly. Features: explores residential care and treatment with a focus on the needs of unique populations, such as black youth, Indigenous youth, and young people impacted by developmental disability or neurodevelopmental challenges emphasizes the voices and participation of young people with lived experience in residential care and treatment written in a uniquely Canadian context, but its theoretical elements draw on residential care in the United States, Germany, South Africa, and elsewhere

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019, a powerful, well-researched, fictional account exploring the trokosi tradition for the curious and the open-minded. Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas' idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo's father, following his mother's advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the fifteen years she is enslaved within the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past, endure the revelation of family secrets, and learn to trust and love again. In the tradition of Chris Cleave's Little Bee, Praise Song for the Butterflies is a contemporary story that offers an educational, eye-opening account of the practice of ritual servitude in West Africa. Spanning decades and two continents, Praise Song for the Butterflies is an unflinching tale of the devastation that children are subject to when adults are ruled by fear and someone must pay the consequences. "Abeo is unrelenting - a fiery protagonist who sparks in every scene. Bernice L. McFadden has created yet another compelling story, this time about hope and freedom." Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun

In this incisive examination of lead poisoning during the past half century, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner focus on one of the most contentious and bitter battles in the history of public health. "Lead Wars" details how the nature of the epidemic has changed and highlights the dilemmas public health agencies face today in terms of prevention strategies and chronic illness linked to low levels of toxic exposure. The authors use the opinion by Maryland's Court of Appeals--which considered whether researchers at Johns Hopkins University's prestigious Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) engaged in unethical research on 108 African-American children--as a springboard to ask fundamental questions about the practice and future of public health. "Lead Wars" chronicles the obstacles faced by public health workers in the conservative, pro-business, anti-regulatory climate that took off in the Reagan years and that stymied efforts to eliminate lead from the environments and the bodies of American children.

Public Child Welfare: A Casebook for Learning and Teaching provides social work students and practicing social workers with 20 real-world cases gathered from four California county child welfare agencies. Readers are exposed to the stories of social workers and families involved in child welfare services. The rich and varied content captures the daily complexities, challenges, and successes that social workers experience in the field. Framed within the context of relevant national and state policy and practices, the cases address a variety of child welfare issues including neglect and abuse, substance abuse, domestic violence, criminal justice involvement, mental health, reunification and adoption, and more. Case-based learning relates to family dynamics, initial risks and harms, finding the right home for the child, court proceedings, and the trajectory of these complex cases over time. Public Child Welfare challenges social work students and practitioners to critically examine documented, real-world cases to inform and strengthen their own practices. The casebook is an ideal resource for social work courses, child welfare seminars, and agency-based training programs.

This popular textbook gives students a practical understanding of the broad range of skills they will need during the course of their studies and throughout their youth work career. Topics covered include: - Reaching out to young people - Developing young people's participation - Working in different settings - Bringing young people together - Practice placements The new edition will be essential reading for all foundation and undergraduate students of youth work. It will also be a valuable resource for qualified health, social care and education professionals who wish to understand the intricacies of working with young people.

For over a decade and with the best of intentions, the U.K. government has spent millions attempting, but largely failing, to improve personal, social and educational outcomes for children and young people in public care. In this book, the authors explain why the problems of this highly vulnerable group have resisted such effort, energy and expenditure and go on to show how achieving positive outcomes for children in care is possible when the root causes of failure are tackled.

Topic covered include:

- The power of parenting

- The impact of parental rejection on emotional development

- Support for the adaptive emotional development of children and young people

- Practical advice on introducing the 'Authentic Warmth' approach into existing childcare organisations

- Future issues in childcare

This book is essential reading for carers, commissioners, policymakers, support professionals, designated teachers and students of social work.

A top economist weighs in on one of the most urgent questions of our times: What is the source of inequality and what is the remedy? In Giving Kids a Fair Chance, Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman argues that the accident of birth is the greatest source of inequality in America today. Children born into disadvantage are, by the time they start kindergarten, already at risk of dropping out of school, teen pregnancy, crime, and a lifetime of low-wage work. This is bad for all those born into disadvantage and bad for American society. Current social and education policies directed toward children focus on improving cognition, yet success in life requires more than smarts. Heckman calls for a refocus of social policy toward early childhood interventions designed to enhance both cognitive abilities and such non-cognitive skills as confidence and perseverance. This new focus on preschool intervention would emphasize improving the early environments of disadvantaged children and increasing the quality of parenting while respecting the primacy of the family and America's cultural diversity. Heckman shows that acting early has much greater positive economic and social impact than later interventions-which range from reduced pupil-teacher ratios to adult literacy programs to expenditures on police-that draw the most attention in the public policy debate. At a time when state and local budgets for early interventions are being cut, Heckman issues an urgent call for action and offers some practical steps for how to design and pay for new programs. The debate that follows delves deeply into some of the most fraught questions of our time: the sources of inequality, the role of schools in solving social problems, and how to invest public resources most effectively. Mike Rose, Geoffrey Canada, Charles Murray, Carol Dweck, Annette Lareau, and other prominent experts participate.

"From 185 to 193 America witnessed a unique emigration and resettlement of at least 2, children and several thousand adults, primarily from the East Coast to the West. This 'placing out,' an attempt to find homes for the urban poor, was best known by the 'orphan trains' that carried the children. Holt carefully analyzes the system, initially instituted by the New York Children's Aid Society in 1853, tracking its imitators as well as the reasons for its creation and demise. She captures the children's perspective with the judicious use of oral histories, institutional records, and newspaper accounts. This well-written volume sheds new light on the multifaceted experience of children's immigration, changing concepts of welfare, and Western expansion. It is good, scholarly social history."-Library Journal

The Third Edition of Child Abuse Quick Reference is completely revised and expanded, with new and emerging science for the multidisciplinary response to child abuse. It features updated models for the investigation, diagnosis, and treatment of child abuse as well as three all-new chapters on: nonfatal strangulation in children, pregnancy in sexually abused minors, and prevention of child maltreatment. With this latest edition, Child Abuse Quick Reference remains the most detailed and convenient field guide to child maltreatment-ideal for professionals working directly with abused children. Medical practitioners, social workers, attorneys, law enforcement personnel, and others will find this easy-to-use guide essential to their work on the front lines of prevention and intervention in cases of child maltreatment.

Behind from the Start examines the link between America's shaming, blaming, and marginalizing of poor parents, and American policies that jeopardize the life chances of vulnerable young children, thereby maintaining the cycle of chronic poverty. Lenette Azzi-Lessing reveals how negative public and political discourse regarding poor families impacts the very policies and programs intended to support them, which have in turn failed to meet their aims. She considers the cultural and political forces that contribute to intergenerational poverty in the U.S., and the consequences for the millions of young children in families stuck at the bottom of our economy. Close to six million children ages five and under live in poverty and that number continues to grow. Research has shown that the experience of poverty in the first years of life is particularly harmful, blunting physical and brain development, increasing risk for chronic health issues and injury, and limiting lifelong capacity for learning and success. Behind from the Start reveals that what began as the War on Poverty has, over the course of the past five decades, been contorted into a War on the Poor in which the lives of America's poorest children remain heartbreakingly grim, as are their prospects for a healthy and successful future. Drawing from fields as wide-ranging as media studies, psychology, social welfare, public policy, neuroscience, and education as well as her own considerable personal experience, Lessing makes a forceful case for action to break out of this self-fulfilling cycle.

It is common for adoptive families to need support and services after adoption. Postadoption services can help families with a wide range of issues. They are available for everything from learning how to explain adoption to a preschooler, to helping a child who experienced early childhood abuse, to supporting an adopted teens search for identity. Experience with adoptive families has shown that all family members can benefit from some type of postadoption support. Families of children who have experienced trauma, neglect, abuse, out-of-home care, or institutionalisation may require more intensive services. This book serves as a guide to postadoption assistance.

The purpose of this book is to compile and publicize the best current thinking about training and professional development for youth workers. School age youth spend far more of their time outside of school than inside of school. The United States boasts a rich and vibrant ecosystem of Out?of?School Time programs and funders, ranging from grassroots neighborhood centers to national Boys and Girls Clubs. The research community, too, has produced some scientific consensus about defining features of high quality youth development settings and the importance of after?school and informal programs for youth. But we know far less about the people who provide support, guidance, and mentoring to youth in these settings. What do youth workers do? What kinds of training, certification, and job security do they have? Unlike K?12 classroom teaching, a profession with longstanding - if contested - legitimacy and recognition, "youth work" does not call forth familiar imagery or cultural narratives. Ask someone what a youth worker does and they are just as likely to think you are talking about a young person working at her first job as they are to think you mean a young adult who works with youth. This absence of shared archetypes or mental models is matched by a shortage of policies or professional associations that clearly define youth work and assume responsibility for training and preparation. This is a problem because the functions performed by youth workers outside of school are critical for positive youth development, especially in ourcurrent context governed by widening income inequality. The US has seen a decline in social mobility and an increase in income inequality and racial segregation. This places a greater premium on the role of OST programs in supporting access and equity to learning opportunities for children, particularly for those growing up in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. Fortunately, in the past decade there has been an emergence of research and policy arguments about the importance of naming, defining, and attending to the profession of youth work. A report released in 2013 by the DC Children and Youth Investment Corporation suggests employment opportunities for youth workers are growing faster than the national average; and as the workforce increases, so will efforts to professionalize it through specialized training and credentials. Our purpose in this volume is to build on that momentum by bringing together the best scholarship and policy ideas - coming from in and outside of higher education - about conceptions of youth work and optimal types of preparation and professional development.

Highlighting and examining the vital role of nurses in protecting children from maltreatment, this book explores the input of nurses from different disciplines to the work of protecting children and young people. It draws on relevant theoretical, research and policy literature but focuses in particular on the evidence base for the value of their work.While orientated towards UK practice, the book includes some comparative material to add a wider European perspective. The text includes discussion of specialist public health nursing roles such as health visiting and school nursing, as well as the contribution of those who have more general nursing roles but whose work brings them into contact with children, young people and their families.This volume will inform all qualified nurses working in acute care and primary care settings who have contact with children, young people and their families. It will also be of use to those undertaking post-qualifying and post-graduate courses and is particularly relevant for Specialist Community Public Health Nurses (SCPHNs) many of whom, once qualified, have significant child protection roles in practice.

Influenced by news reports of young children brutalized by their parents, most of us see the role of child services as the prevention of severe physical abuse. But as Tina Lee shows in Catching a Case, most child welfare cases revolve around often ill-founded charges of neglect, and the parents swept into the system are generally struggling but loving, fighting to raise their children in the face of crushing poverty, violent crime, poor housing, lack of childcare, and failing schools. Lee explored the child welfare system in New York City, observing family courts, interviewing parents and following them through the system, asking caseworkers for descriptions of their work and their decision-making processes, and discussing cases with attorneys on all sides. What she discovered about the system is troubling. Lee reveals that, in the face of draconian budget cuts and a political climate that blames the poor for their own poverty, child welfare practices have become punitive, focused on removing children from their families and on parental compliance with rules. Rather than provide needed help for families, case workers often hold parents to standards almost impossible for working-class and poor parents to meet. For instance, parents can be accused of neglect for providing inadequate childcare or housing even when they cannot afford anything better. In many cases, child welfare exacerbates family problems and sometimes drives parents further into poverty while the family court system does little to protect their rights. Catching a Case is a much-needed wake-up call to improve the child welfare system, and to offer more comprehensive social services that will allow all children to thrive.