An autobiographical look through the eyes of a spirited boy, who, after the loss of his mother at age one, grows to manhood at The Methodist Children's Home, Winston- Salem, NC.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mental Health Consultation in Infant?Toddler Child Care addresses the impact of the caregiver?child relationship on the mental health of young children. As young children spend more and more time in child care programs, those programs have an increasingly significant effect on their healthy social and emotional development. Kadija Johnston and Charles Brinnamen review current theory and offer practical suggestions for improving relationships between program directors, staff, parents, children, and mental-health consultants to help identify and remove obstacles to quality care. The authors also offer real-life examples of effective programmatic functioning, interstaff and parent?staff relationships, and direct child interventions. Mental health professionals at all levels, early childhood educators and trainers, and policy makers will find this book useful guide to making positive changes in the childcare environment.

Beginning in the 1960s, large numbers of Aboriginal children in Canada were removed from their families by provincial child welfare services. Known as the Sixties Scoop, the practice resulted in the destruction of individuals and the devastation of communities. Today, Aboriginal children comprise roughly half of the children in state care in Canada, but since the 1980s, bands and tribal councils have developed unique community-based child welfare services to better protect Aboriginal children. Protecting Aboriginal Children explores contemporary approaches to the well-being of Aboriginal children through interviews with practising social workers employed at Aboriginal child welfare organizations and the state child protection service in British Columbia. It places current practice in a socio-historical context, describes emerging practice in decolonizing communities, and identifies the effects of political and media controversy on social workers. While the dangerous, stressful, and political aspects of the work are not minimized, the creative and original practice developing outside the spotlight of media and government scrutiny are highlighted. communities and to describe child protection practice simultaneously from the point of view of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal social workers. Those working in child welfare or contemplating a career in child protection will find the book an insightful analysis of current practice thinking and experience. Aboriginal peoples with an interest in health and human services, as well as social work students, child welfare workers and administrators, and health, education, and human service professionals will find it particularly useful.

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.

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 State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) offers federal matching funds for states and territories to provide health insurance to uninsured, low-income children in families whose annual incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid. Unlike Medicaid, which operates as an individual entitlement, SCHIP operates as a capped grant program. Allotment of funds among states is determined by a formula set in law. Once a state depletes a given year's original allotment, other than funds from prior years made available through redistribution, no additional federal funds will be made available to that state for that year. States have the flexibility to design their programs to operate within these funding constraints. The allotment and redistribution methods under current law have been incompatible with state spending patterns to date. This book details the issues necessary to understand and track this important program. CONTENTS: Preface. SCHIP Financing Issues; Medicare Provisions in the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000 (BIPA, PL 106-554); Reaching Low-Income, Uninsured Children: Are Medicaid and SCHIP Doing the Job?; Medicaid, SCHIP, a

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.

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.

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.

Child Protective Services practice is multifaceted and challenging, requiring professionals to make difficult decisions that profoundly impact children and families. This second edition of Helping in Child Protective Services: A Competency-Based Handbook is a comprehensive desk reference that serves as both a daily guide for workers and a training tool for supervisors and administrators. This invaluable resource provides CPS workers with the knowledge and skills necessary to assist vulnerable families, covering such key issues as assessment, decision making, intervention, child development, medical evaluation, accountability, and the legal framework of culturally responsive practice.

The handbook begins with a diary that describes a typical CPS case from initial report to case closure in order to illustrate the complexity of the CPS system and the situations CPS workers might encounter. The book also covers the history of CPS and the laws governing intervention when children are mistreated. Specifically, this handbook helps CPS professionals and students explore the casework process from intake through case closure with step-by-step instructions and examples; learn about child development, key developmental milestones, and the importance of intervention; understand the medical evaluation of child abuse and neglect through a detailed guide of various forms and indicators of abuse and neglect; learn how to structure interviews and phrase questions to obtain information from families and guide the casework process; and understand the importance of accountable practice to families, their agencies, and the public.

This latest edition of Helping in Child Protective Services compiles the most up-to-date research and practice information to help professionals provide the highest quality and most innovative services to children and families.

Global Childhoods in International Perspective gathers a wide spectrum of contributors from Europe, the U.S., South Asia, South Africa and Latin America, who, attuned with present dilemmas in the area of childhood studies, discuss some key theoretical and empirical aspects of child scholarship, such as identity, child wellbeing, child mobility and migration, intergenerational relationships and child abuse. Through these expert contributions, the book explores the many ways in which the relationship between universality and particularities of childhood plays an important role in describing global childhoods. The book highlights childhood as a cross-cutting issue in global sociology with chapters on globalization and schooling in Burkina Faso, child abuse and neglect in India, identity and integration among children of African immigrants in France, social class mobility of Filipino migrant children in Italy and France, and an investigation into Kyrgyz childhoods. Ideal reading for researchers, practitioners and students interested in both childhood studies and the other areas including community research, sociology of education, social stratification, and the sociology of migration.

The authors examine the dynamics of urban life and street children's health in the era of globalization and structural adjustments in Tanzania. They discuss the factors that push children out of their homes, how the children survive in streets, the hardships and violence they endure and how this affects their health. They argue that the impact of the legacy of colonial policies and some post-colonial development policies, the negative consequences of uncontrolled process of globalization, the impact of structural adjustments and the HIV/AIDS epidemic are simultaneously intensifying the situation of poverty in Tanzania. These processes are not only destroying families and communities that have for many years acted as safety nets for children in need, but are also manufacturing poor, helpless and powerless children most of whom resort to street life.

"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.

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.

About one-third of births in the United States occur to unmarried parents. Evidence suggests that children who grow up in families headed by single parents have worse socioeconomic outcomes than those raised by married parents. "Fatherlessness" has become a byword in public debate and policymaking, yet fundamental questions about unmarried parents and their ideas of paternal responsibility remain unanswered.In My Baby's Father, Maureen R. Waller draws on interviews with unmarried parents whose children receive welfare to address several basic, vital questions: How do low-income mothers and fathers define the father's obligation to his children and explain irresponsible behavior among fathers? How do they negotiate private arrangements of paternal acknowledgment and support? And how do these informal practices interact with mandatory welfare and child-support regulations?The majority of research on low-income families focuses on single mothers. Waller's book also gives a voice to the fathers, historically either excluded from academic and policy discussions or simply characterized as "deadbeat dads" with no sense of paternal responsibility. By documenting the experiences of African-American and white parents simultaneously, Waller illustrates the extent to which beliefs and practices are likely to cut across racial lines. She also shifts the focus from teenagers to adults, who constitute the largest group of unmarried parents.My Baby's Father provides honest glimpses into the lives of unmarried parents. In addition, it offers specific recommendations for social policies that are both better suited to unmarried parents' socioeconomic situations and more responsive to the practices of responsible fatherhood in low-income families.

John Robinson had the worst possible start in life, taken into care at only four months, John was left in abusive foster homes for most of his childhood. Yet today he has found hope and is working in Manchester with the Eden Bus Ministry with children who are as deprived and unloved as he was.

Mission Statement: This book investigates issues surrounding the creation of social policy and support systems for children and families in this emerging democracy. Approaches advocated by progressively oriented Lithuanian educators, mental health and human service professionals toward addressing these conditions are presented by Lithuanian and American educators and mental health practitioners who have been working toward the development of democratically based social institutions.