In the 20th century we have witnessed the massive movement of women and young mothers into paid employment in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. By 1995 64% of married mothers with a preschool-aged child were in the labor force compared to 35% only 25 years earlier. Rising divorce rates and an increase in the percentage of female-headed households make more families dependent on the mother s earnings. These structural shifts, along with women s growing aspirations for careers and more independence, have changed social norms. Families increasingly depend on formally provided child care.

The child care crisis is easily overlooked. It is a silent, voiceless crisis. Three-, four-, and five-year-old children cannot speak for themselves. Low- and middle-income children and mothers, those most directly affected, have little economic or political power. What choices must we as a society make to aid our nation in raising its children?"

The Silent Crisis in U.S. Child Care," a special issue of THE ANNALS, addresses the important debates and questions regarding child care:

- Regulating Child Care Quality

- Making Child Care Affordable in the United States

. Defining and Assessing Early Childhood Program Quality

. Who Should Pay for Child Care

The discussion of child care not only affects our society as a whole, but also influences the decisions of policymakers and politicians. The articles in this special issue are valuable to scholars, researchers, policymakers and those working in and with the child care system who seek to find answers and solutions to this timely and important problem."

This book tells the story of Sure Start, one of the flagship programmes of the last government. It tells how Sure Start was set up, the numerous changes it went through, and how it has changed the landscape of services for all young children in England. Offering insight into the key debates on services for young children, as well as how decisions are made in a highly political context, it will be of keen interest to policy academics, senior managers of public services and all those with a keen interest in developing services for young children.

This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. Bringing together the results of studies of child services from diverse countries and cultures, this book covers a broad array of topical issues and social work interventions. It examines adolescent emotional health, children of substance abusers, childhood depression and teenage suicide, children's weight and physical activity, language development in autistic children, and more. Chapters include a survey of the number of children living with substance-abusing parents in the UK, a study which helped identify several ways in which schools address adolescent emotional health issues, and a review of a program that supports parents of young people with suicidal behavior. The book also examines the role child protective services efforts play in delinquency prevention and intervention.

In recent years there has been a growing trend towards increased communication among members of the adoption triad. Although many adoption agencies are moving towards increased information sharing, there is little research evidence available concerning the consequences of this practice. This unique study investigates the consequences of openness in adoption, as practiced by several adoption agencies. Seventeen adoptive families and their corresponding birthparents were interviewed. The effects of the open adoption procedures on family life and attitudes were assessed. Included are a review of the literature on openness in adoption; a review of relevant theoretical perspectives; a discussion of agency practices; and a description of strengths and weaknesses of current research methods.

This book provides insights into the theoretical framework of 'tensions' related to care for children and the elderly. It analyzes if, and under what conditions, welfare state reforms have contributed to strengthening existing tensions, creating new tensions, or relaxing such tensions.

This book provides an overview of the core professional issues in the field of child and youth care practice. The author explores themes ranging from relationships and the exploration of Self to career building and field-specific approaches to management. The book is written from a pragmatic perspective, and serves both to advance current thinking in the field about professional issues as well as to provide the student of child and youth care practice and practitioners with practical and accessible approaches to developing a strong and sustainable professional identity. All of the themes in this book are explored within a context of ethical decision-making and practice approaches informed by a commitment to children's rights and empowerment. Throughout the discussions, concepts and themes are considered in relation to four specific lenses: the power lens, the diversity lens, the language lens and the transitioning from theory to practice lens. These lenses serve to ensure that the reader adopts a critical understanding of the professional issues in the field and is able to develop his or her own professional identity while mitigating the power and identity issues necessarily associated with being a practitioner in a helping profession. This book was published as a special issue of Child and Youth Services.

This book is about the relationships and networks - social capital - that children and young people have in and out of school. Social capital has become of increasing interest to policy makers but there has been little evidence of how it operates in practice. In this unique collection, the social capital of children and young people, and in one case parents and teachers, is explored in a wide range of formal and informal settings. The contributors to the book, who include academic researchers and educational professionals, provide in-depth accounts of social capital being developed and used by children and young people. They offer critical reflections on the significance of social capital and on the experiences of researching the social capital of sometimes vulnerable people. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with how children and young people get along, get by and get on.

Rigorous research is crucial to effective work with young people and increasingly youth practitioners need to be able to develop, review and evidence their work using a variety of research and assessment tools. This text equips students and practitioners with a thorough understanding of research design, practice and dissemination, as well as approaches to evidence-based practice.

A clear practice framework informs the book, outlining the significance of research to youth work, especially in relation to designing and developing services for young people. Research and Research Methods for Youth Practitioners:

• Analyses the research/practitioner role
• Explores the ethical context of research in youth work
• Offers a thorough analysis of key methodological questions in research in practice
• Provides a guide to data collection and analysis
• Presents five principal research strategies for youth work: ethnographic work and visual methods; interviewing and evaluation; surveys and evaluation; the use of secondary data and documentary analysis; and researching virtual and online settings
• Discusses the implications of research for work with young people as well as its dissemination.

Written by experienced researchers and practitioner-researchers, each chapter in this accessible textbook includes an overview, a critical discussion of the pros and cons of the particular method or approach, a case study, a practice-based task, a summary and suggestions for further reading. This textbook is invaluable for student and practising youth workers. It is also a useful reference for other practitioners working with young people.

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.

This collection of 12 new and revised essays on child care and children's services, written by leading child welfare historian Roy Parker, draws on his lifetime of research in this area. By exploring various topics these essays explain significant political, economic, legal and ideological aspects of this history from the mid-1850s. This unique and lasting review of child care services allows readers to understand how the services for some of society's most vulnerable children have become what they are, how well they have met and now meet the needs of those children. The collection provides a high-quality, historical reference resource that will inform and capture the interest of social work and social policy students as well as social and legal historians, political scientists and those involved in administration and government, struggling with the issues of the day.

Why is it important for social workers to form meaningful relationships with young children on their caseloads? And how can social workers develop meaningful relationships with these young children? This book provides a timely, invaluable resource and practical guide for social work students specialising in family and child care and for practitioners who have young children on their caseloads. Packed with real life examples of in-depth interviews conducted with young children known to social services, it outlines what can be done to improve practice in this challenging and demanding area. Building Relationships and Communicating with Young Children is the first book to bring to life the perspectives of young children and to highlight their competency within the interview process. It: explores the key ingredients required by social workers to establish, maintain, nurture and value their relationships with young children highlights what young children, within the context of meaningful relationships with social workers, can tell us about their circumstances, their perspectives, their feelings and their views uses case examples to identify best practice guidelines including methods and techniques for social workers to build meaningful relationships with young children on their caseloads makes recommendations regarding how best to positively engage and work with young children. Written by a social worker and university lecturer with 16 years experience of working in the field of child protection, this textbook is full of case studies and practical advice about how to form relationships with young children known to social services, the most appropriate methods to use and how to represent their perspectives. It is essential reading for all social work students as well as social work practitioners and other social and health care professionals.

Between 1850 and 1970, around three hundred thousand children were sent to new homes through child migration programmes run by churches, charities and religious orders in the United States and the United Kingdom. Intended as humanitarian initiatives to save children from social and moral harm and to build them up as national and imperial citizens, these schemes have in many cases since become the focus of public censure, apology and sometimes financial redress. Remembering Child Migration is the first book to examine both the American 'orphan train' programmes and Britain's child migration schemes to its imperial colonies. Setting their work in historical context, it discusses their assumptions, methods and effects on the lives of those they claimed to help. Rather than seeing them as reflecting conventional child-care practice of their time, the book demonstrates that they were subject to criticism for much of the period in which they operated. Noting similarities between the American 'orphan trains' and early British migration schemes to Canada, it also shows how later British child migration schemes to Australia constituted a reversal of what had been understood to be good practice in the late Victorian period. At its heart, the book considers how welfare interventions motivated by humanitarian piety came to have such harmful effects in the lives of many child migrants. By examining how strong moral motivations can deflect critical reflection, legitimise power and build unwarranted bonds of trust, it explores the promise and risks of humanitarian sentiment.

Successful Prevention Programs for Children and Adolescents presents a wide variety of exemplary programs addressing behavioral and social problems, school failure, drug use, injuries, child abuse, physical health, and other critical issues. The validity and generality of each study's results are given special attention, and outcomes involving actual behavioral change are emphasized. A special appendix lists resources on prevention, including other texts, special journal issues, national clearinghouses, resource centers containing videos and curriculum materials, and Web sites.

Leading scholars summarize the current research on risk, protection, and resilience in the context of youth violence and its implications for practice with children and families. It describes an emerging framework for understanding social and health problems and for developing more effective programs for interventions. This book describes resilient children by examining risk factors for violence and explores the factors that lead some children to resist or adapt to risk.

The concept of resilience has been applied to family, school, neighborhood, and organizational contexts. Educational, family, and community resilience are used as the framework to describe social systems that possess risk factors. By understanding why some systems with risk factors are adaptable, information for assessment can be applied to service plans, that will be more effective in treating children at risk of antisocial, aggressive behavior.

As they intervene in families to reduce the risk of harm to children, child protection social workers around the world are confronting increasingly high levels of hostility and aggression from some parents. Investigations into the deaths of children known to social services have accused social workers of failing to use their professional authority to challenge parents. This much needed book analyses public inquiries and serious case reviews to reveal the dynamics of hostility and aggression which contribute to the failure to protect children. These can occur within the office environment and between social workers and parents or their partners. The book details applied theories of aggression in conjunction with the skills required for dealing with anger, conflict and aggression. A set of tools and reflective exercises assists the application of theory to day-to-day child protection practice. This indispensable and practical text is ideal for social work students, practitioners, trainers and academics specialising in child protection.

The Young Lives project is a long-term study of childhood poverty in developing countries. International experts follow two groups of children in poor communities in four countries as they grow into young adults with five rounds of surveys, interspersed with on-going participatory research with a smaller number of the children, planned to cover a period of 15 years. This book represents the engagement of Young Lives with researchers and debates in the field, reflecting on the first two rounds of data coming from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam, with supporting material from Tanzania and South Africa. Topics include the ethics of research, the long-term causes and consequences of childhood poverty, and the resilience and optimism shown by children and their families. The authors also look at the dynamics of childhood poverty -- how and why some families move in and out of poverty as well as learning, children's timeuse and life transitions -- focusing on children's daily lives, their families and communities.

Everyone who has been involved in an adoption will find this book fascinating and valuable.

This study of children's participation in decisions about their care draws on recent work in sociology and anthropology, psychology and legal philosophy in order to understand this challenging area of social life. It also reports on original and groundbreaking research into children's views of decision-making processes. The book has important theoretical implications and important lessons for social welfare policy and practice. It will be of interest to those involved in childhood studies or in qualitative research methods, as well as in social welfare provision.

This book challenges the concept of wellbeing as applied to children, particularly in a school-based context. Taking a post-structural approach, it suggests that wellbeing should be understood, and experiences revealed, at the level of the subjective child. This runs counter to contemporary accounts that reduce children's wellbeing to objective lists of things that are needed in order to live well. This book will be useful for academics and practitioners working directly with children, and anyone interested in children's wellbeing.

Recently, many political voices have indicated a strong desire to track down absent fathers who have absconded without fulfilling child support obligations to their biological or adopted children. This renewed interest in deadbeat dads has resulted from a recognition that the social welfare programs, which pick up the tab for abandoned children, are contributing significantly to an ever-increasing federal budget deficit. Meanwhile, in a large number of cases, there simply isn't enough money for an absent parent to maintain his own separate support and fulfill the support obligations that the law requires. This book explores the history, reforms, and consequences of child support in America. The authors have included case studies as well as discussions on the psychological consequences of separating families, effects of divorce laws on the award of child support, contested paternity, and child custody alternatives. They conclude with a discussion on economic responsibility and the deadbeat epidemic. The book is intended to empower the larger number of parents who are caught in the midst of overworked agencies, discouraging tales, and the lack of information that keeps them paralyzed from acting on their own behalf.

This book deals with the implementation and application of the "in the best interests of the child principle" in research and practice. With contributions by authors from nine different countries (United States, Belgium, France, Norway, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Israel, Ireland, Canada) an international perspective is adopted. After the outline of the theme given in the introductory chapter, the first part illustrates the search for theory-driven and empirically-based models to deal with the complexity of parenting. In the second part illustrations about the implementation and application of the best interests principle in child and youth care practice are given. Part three is focusing on the organization of child and youth care systems according to the best interests principle.

Provides social work students (undergraduate or graduate level) with 50 compelling case examples categorized by maltreatment type(s) and by underlying problems, with intervention plans along with tips for building working alliances with clients. Emphasizes growing the working alliance between social worker and client, reflecting the strength perspective emphasized in social work practice. Suitable for course usage on both BSW and MSW on the following modules: child welfare services; family preservation services; evidence-based practice; and human behavior in the social environment.

Improve services for children and youth with new concepts, different perspectives, and up-to-date information! How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children: For Better or for Worse? explores the positive and negative impacts of social institutions on child and adolescent well-being. Experts in the fields of social work and child welfare provide a broad perspective on how to improve outcomes for children and adolescents who receive institutional services either directly or indirectly. This book contains innovative strategies for reducing the negative outlook for children and families in shelters, foster homes, and residential treatment centers. This book offers improvements for care services at such locations as: residential institutions state custody and foster homes schools youth development organizations urban public housing developments homeless shelters In How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children, you'll discover current case studies that show how certain groupssuch as minorities and economically challenged children and familiesare stigmatized by the current child welfare system. You'll also find new evidence of the detrimental effects that can occur as a result of institutionalization and the need to find alternatives to removing children and adolescents from family-style environments. This book contains tables to clarify the findings of these case studies, references to further your reading, and detailed descriptions of plans and programs that you can implement in your own social work practice. How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children presents new ways to create positive environments for children and adolescents, including: strengths-based approaches to practice with children with severe emotional and behavioral disturbances custody planning for the children of HIV-infected women discipline-specific education for child protection caseworkers creating supportive staff-youth relationships within all institutions multiple family group interventions which help to strengthen homeless families in preparation to transition to permanent housing the School Development Program, Child Development Project, and Comprehensive Quality Programminginterventions for preventing school drop-outs Life Plans for post-institutionalized youth

In recent years increasing attention has been paid to issues of social exclusion and the problematic transition from youthful dependence to adult independence. Often this has had severe consequences, ranging from under achievement and disruptive behaviour in school, through the misuse of alcohol and drugs, to serious or persistent offending. Seeking to address these issues has become a major focus of public policy and a variety of forms of intervention with disaffected youth have been set up. One of the most talked about forms of intervention with disaffected youth has been 'mentoring'. This book, based on a large-scale research study, examines the lives of a large group of 'disaffected' young people, and considers the impact that involvement in a mentoring programme had on them. In doing so it fills a large gap, providing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of mentoring programmes, providing at the same time a vivid insight into the nature of such disaffection, the realities of contemporary social exclusion among young people and the experience and outcome of mentoring.

Once considered the preserve of the wealthy, nanny care has grown in response to changes in the labour market, including the rising number of working mothers with young children and increases in non-standard work patterns. This book presents new empirical research about in-home childcare in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, three countries where governments are pursuing new ways to support in-home childcare through funding, regulation and migration. The compelling policy story that emerges illustrates the implications of different mechanisms for facilitating in-home childcare - for families and for care workers.