This book investigates the way that corporations are strategically shaping children to be under-aged hyperconsumers.Sharon Beder shows how marketers and advertisers are targeting ever younger children in a relentless campaign, transforming children's play into a commercial opportunity and taking advantage of childish anxieties.Beder investigates the corporate relations and ideals that infiltrate every aspect of our lives, especially through our public services. She presents an alarming picture of how a child's social development - through education, health care and nutrition - has become an ordered conveyor belt of consumerist conditioning. Focusing on education in particular, Beder explains how businesses are taking control of more and more aspects of schooling, not only for profit but to erode state schooling and promote business values. Similarly, she writes how children are taught from an early age that the pharmacy offers the solutions to all their ills, and how pharmaceuticals are only to happy to 'educate' them.

Family Group Conferencing indicates a large-scale shift in assumptions about the way child welfare services are planned and delivered--away from models that emphasize pathology, and toward those seeking an ecological understanding of the families and social networks involved. The contributors also present a wealth of information on related approaches, such as community conferences, circles, and wraparound services. The British Journal of Social Work noted that "there are issues relating to both process and outcome. This book offers some answers that are intelligent and passionate."

The poverty rate for children in the United States exceeds that of all other Western, industrialized nations except Australia. Moreover, poverty among children has increased substantially since 1970, affecting more than one-fifth of U.S. children. These persistent high rates require new ideas in both research and public policy. This volume presents such ideas. Four arenas of possible change are addressed: mothers' employment, child care, fathers' involvement, and access to health care. These four types of change have each been brought under the umbrella of the Family Support Act of 1988, after several years of debate over welfare reform. The goal of this landmark legislation is to enable poor families to escape poverty by requiring education, employment training opportunities for mothers, and improving child support by noncustodial fathers. Escape from Poverty is designed to examine the implications of these new policy-driven changes for children. The editors have developed an interdisciplinary perspective, involving demographers, developmental psychologists, economists, health experts, historians, and sociologists - a framework essential for addressing the complexities inherent in the links between the lives of poor adults and children in our society. This book will appeal to both researchers and policy makers.

Bringing together essays, research studies and other material written over the past two decades, this book traces through them a history of political and intellectual debates on the left and in cultural studies, around central issues of education, labour and the youth question. An argument is made for linking the cultural, structural and autobiographical dimensions of the youth question in order to engage educationally with the burden of representation which young people are made to carry via race, class and sexuality in the postmodern world. The book includes three major unpublished pieces and an introduction which discusses the nature of the collection, and sets it in both a personal and political context.

In April 2009, an inspiring international conference was held at Bielefeld on the topic "Children and the Good Life: New Challenges for Research on Children." The focus was on how we can define and measure a "good life" for children growing up in the modern world. This tied in with discussions on how convincing universalistic theories are, what research on children can contribute, and how children themselves can be integrated into the research process and debates on the "good life."

Discourses and the production of knowledge on the "good life" or "well-being" require a guiding idea or a theoretical frame. This frame can come from the feminist ethic of care or from the Human and Children's Rights Convention, from the idea of welfare, or from the Capability Approach.

Les B. Whitbeck and Dan R. Hoyt begin their report on street children in the Midwest with the statement, "If you live in or have visited even a medium-sized city recently, you have seen runaway and homeless young people. They congregate in certain downtown areas and hang out in malls during inclement weather . . . Mostly, they look like the other kids. . . . The difference is that they won't be going home tonight."

This book draws on a study of over six hundred runaway and homeless adolescents and over two hundred of their caretakers from cities in four Midwestern states. It focuses on the family histories of these young people and on the developmental impact of early independence. Street social networks, subsistence strategies, sexuality, and street victimization are all considered, as well as their effect on adolescent behaviors and emotional health.

Relying on interviews and data from survey research, and working in partnership with street outreach agencies, Whitbeck and Hoyt lead the reader through the various risk factors associated with precocious independence, beginning in the family and extending to external environments and behaviors. Nowhere to Grow is an emotional account of the cumulative consequences for young people with few good options at the outset and even fewer once they are on their own.

Traditional models of childhood need reconstructing, especially as children become more active in negotiating the boundaries between themselves and adults. Wyness argues for new, more effective conceptions of childhood, derived from analysis of recent social policy. He interprets legislation and reveals that recent children acts and educational reform exhibit a strengthening of the socialising power of adults over children. Most importantly, this book challenges a prevalent underlying conception of children as 'lesser' or 'inferior' versions of adults, a flawed understanding that still influences policy.

A vital interrogation of the internationally accepted policy and practice consensus that intervention to shape parenting in the early years is the way to prevent disadvantage. Given the divisive assumptions and essentialist ideas behind early years intervention, in whose interests does it really serve? This book critically assesses assertions that the 'wrong type of parenting' has biological and cultural effects, stunting babies' brain development and leading to a life of poverty and under-achievement. It shows how early intervention policies underpinned by interpretations of brain science perpetuate gendered, classed and raced inequalities. The exploration of future directions will be welcomed by those looking for a positive, collectivist vision of the future that addresses the real underlying issues in the creation of disadvantage.

This book explores what it means to be and become-at-home in theological perspective, located in the context of a youth club. Drawing on ethnographic research, Phoebe Hill presents an account of what an authentic Christian hospitality could look like in a youth setting, and the ways in which the young people - the strangers at the door - might enable the Christian youth worker to become more fully at home. Discourses around Christian hospitality often unwittingly perpetuate implicit power imbalances. The youth club offers a context for Christian hospitality that 'tips' the power in favour of the young people who attend, enabling the youth leaders to share and create home with young people in a distinctive way. As young people leave the Church in droves, the Church faces the urgent and daunting task of finding new ways of being with young people on their own terms; this book offers one solution. Hill argues that homecoming is an essential task of humanity. We are connected in this common pilgrimage and the need to find places and spaces where we can be at home. Becoming at home may be harder than ever before; numerous sociological, philosophical and theological factors are compromising our ability to dwell in the contemporary world.

Many of our children live in communities where violence, fear, and despair are commonplace. This book describes how one city developed a collaborative effort between law-enforcement and mental health professionals in order to help these children and their families. The Child Development-Community Policing Program in New Haven, Connecticut, was initiated in 1991 to deal more effectively with children who are victims or perpetrators of violence. Police officers, preparing for the new responsibilities of community-based policing, have become familiar with an array of strategies for preventing and responding to community violence. Mental health professionals have learned firsthand about the texture and trauma of the lives of children at risk. Police and mental health professionals working together have been able to mobilize treatment services more quickly and effectively and to assure that treatment plans are carried out. This manual provides a model, case studies, and guidelines for training the participants, operating a consultation service, and evaluating the program on an ongoing basis, all of which will be useful for other communities seeking to implement a similar project.

Solution-based casework is an approach to assessment, case planning, and case management that combines what we know from clinical social work with what we value about sound social work practice. It is grounded in family-centered social work and draws from clinical approaches within social work and mental health. By integrating problem- and solution-focused approaches that form the clinical and social work traditions, treatment partnerships are more easily formed between family, caseworker, and service provider.

Solution-Based Casework is a skill-based, practice-oriented text that provides the specific guidance that students and new practitioners need in order to make sense quickly of the complex tasks of assessment and case planning in child welfare. The book flows out of a long practice experience, and was developed in consultation with workers and supervisors who were attempting to remedy problems viewed as contributing to recurrent abuse and neglect. It seeks to end adversarial relationships in casework and advocates case plans based on specific outcome skills rather than on those written with vague outcome goals measuring attendance in counseling. It serves as a common conceptual framework for integrating disparate segments of a response network, thereby allowing all providers in a therapeutic system to work toward common goals.

The text is divided into three sections. In Section I the conceptual history and theoretical foundations of solution-based casework are presented so that the reader can place this approach to casework within the ongoing professional conversation about what constitutes sound practice. Section II addresses issues of assessment and case planning. Section III focuses on case management issues and how treatment team members experience a solution-based casework approach.

Current family policy approaches emphasise the significance of paternal involvement in children's lives, yet there has been a silence on violent and abusive fathering in these discourses. This is the first UK book to specifically focus on violent fathering discussing original research in the context of domestic violence and emerging practice literature to address this problem. Violent fathering and the risks to children examines fathers' perceptions of their domestic violence and its impact on children, their relationships with children and their parenting practices. It looks at fathers' reasons for wanting contact with children post-separation, abusive parenting practices during child contact and the impacts of perpetrator programmes on the fathers' own perceptions of their abuse. It also discusses abused mothers' perceptions of their ex-partners' parenting. The author recommends ways that policy and practice can be improved in order to safeguard children in family law and child protection practice through a better understanding of the risks posed and appropriate assessment of violent fathers as parents. This book will be of interest to academics and students in family and child welfare policy, socio-legal studies, social work, criminology, gender studies and other disciplines with an interest in domestic violence and child protection. It will also be also be of considerable value to professionals working in this area.

This inspiring book describes the treatment approach, the clientele, and the community networking of Cedar House, a pioneering and successful child abuse treatment program in Long Beach, California. Cedar House: A Model Child Abuse Treatment Program explains Cedar House 's hands-on treatment of families in which children have been abused. Each facet of the treatment process is explored and explained. The authors offer ideas on how the treatment they used can be adapted to your own treatment setting. Cedar House: A Model Child Abuse Treatment Program gives practitioners hope, ideas, and support for hands-on work with multiproblem individuals and families, along with some pitfalls to avoid. Those treating clients who attempt to intimidate with bullying behavior or outbursts can gain understanding and more confidence to deal with others'anger. In addition, therapists and administrators will find ideas for the prevention of burnout. The theme of the book springs from a mind-set of inclusiveness--including clients in every step of the process related to them, enlisting their abilities to help each other as well as themselves, embracing community members in the search for answers, and providing channels for people at all levels to give and to grow. You ll gain new perspective on treatment efforts as Cedar House: A Model Child Abuse Treatment Program explores: nine premises on which the Cedar House program is based the use of staff volunteers as a team actual client profiles and case studies elements of the treatment approach at Cedar House findings from two student research projects relating to the children of Cedar House Cedar House 's relationship with the community a contemporary evaluation of Cedar House and follow-up comments from former clients regarding their families 15--20 years after treatment findings from a study of the dynamics of rage to better understand the breeding ground of violence and abuseCedar House: A Model Child Abuse Treatment Program dispels stereotypes and stresses the rewards of child abuse treatment and the joy found in sharing the journey as families find their footing and as children grow and develop. In 1979, Cedar House became the model treatment center for Los Angeles County 's Neighborhood Family Centers.

To manage the life of the report since publication, Institute for American Values has formed what we are calling the Hardwired to Connect Coalition. The four groups in the coalition are the Institute for American Values and specifically its 33-member Commission on Children at Risk; the YMCA of the USA; the National Council of Churches; and the Search Institute. We envision being able to advertise and sell this volume to interested members of the audience and also believe the contributors will be able to help publicize this volume in their spheres of influence.

Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse in Out-of-Home Care brings into the open current or past sexually, physically, or emotionally abusive behaviors between children or between children and their caregivers in out-of-home care and helps prevent future victimization. The curriculum gives you 20 exercises that promote respectful and nurturing interactions among caregivers and children by offering healthy concepts of touching, communication, and boundaries. By implementing the concepts in this curriculum, you ll help create positive, healthy attachments for children in out-of-home care who may feel abandoned and alone. Exercises in Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse in Out-of-Home Care assist children and caregivers in understanding their rights and others'rights in residential treatment centers and group or foster homes. Exercises focus on: communication on a continuum--teaches children and staff about their own communication and the communications they receive from others a touch continuum--provides an excellent vehicle for discussing the comforting and soothing touch children need and how to differentiate this from eight other types of touch differentiating sexual play from problematic sexual contact between children--helps children and staff talk about sex personal space and boundaries--discusses these as areas of major violations in children who have been abused sexual knowledge--teaches the body parts and their functions discovering what a sex offender does to trick children into situations that end up in sexual abuse--asks the children to make rules that assist other children to recognize unsafe situations, and then gives them the opportunity to create a video, pamphlet, advertisement, or commercial to tell other kids these rulesThis curriculum is unique because it can be completed through children and adults talking together. It assumes that there will be difficulties and conflicts between staff and children and among children themselves and provides a forum in which to raise and discuss these issues. You ll find the curriculum perfect for caregiver training or as exercises caregivers and children do together. You ll also find it very useful for working with children 's families either in family sessions or in multifamily groups.

Children need more than just good schooling: they require safe lives, good health, and sufficient resources to live and grow successfully in their community. This book makes this vital connection, as society must promote a quality education, available health services, and financial equity and opportunity for all.

In recent years child protection issues have dominated media and public discourse in the UK. This book offers a unique perspective by giving voice to those social workers working within a profession which has become increasingly embedded in a culture of blame. Exploring how statutory child protection agencies function, Leigh also reveals how 'organisational culture' can significantly affect the way in which social work is practised. Providing a comparative analysis between the UK and Belgium, Leigh uses ethnography to illuminate the differences between the settings by examining how interactions and affected atmospheres impact on their identities. This book reveals how practitioners perceive themselves differently in such environments and explores the impact this has on their identity as well as the work they carry out with children and families. Leigh's enquiry and compelling critique into social work, identity and organisations calls for mutual understanding and respect, rather than a culture of blame.

Here is a comprehensive review of adolescent substance abuse issues and an expansive, empirically based curriculum for school-based programs to teach adolescents about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. The abuse of alcohol and other drugs among young people is a problem of alarming scope and gravity. Adolescent Substance Abuse explores the multiple forces which impact adolescents and can push them toward drug and alcohol abuse.Adolescent Substance Abuse proposes means by which to effect macro-level change in societal norms and values regarding substance abuse. The authors describes in detail an effective means of teaching adolescents about drugs and alcohol using an empirically based teaching method called Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT). TGT was developed through extensive research on games used as teaching devices. It uses small groups as classroom work units and capitalizes on peer influence by using peers as teachers and supporters. The book explains an effective curriculum which utilizes the TGT approach and provides a program for parents. The curriculum is unique in that it is anchored in empirical data and delivered via adolescent peer groups. Adolescent Substance Abuse addresses other issues pertinent to the reduction of adolescent substance abuse by exploring subsystems of change, including school and peer group environments, home and family, the media, community movements, and business and industry. The book is a great source of innovative ideas for beginning and expert counselors, social workers, mental health professionals, school psychologists, and others who want to prevent adolescent abuse of drugs and alcohol.

This is the second book in the series Adulting while Autistic, which explores the facets of neurodivergent adulthood, including dating, marriage and parenthood. Wendela Whitcomb Marsh delves into the many ways autists can succeed and be true to themselves in a neuromajority world.

Here is an informative guide to help directors and staff of residential treatment centers (RTCs) cope with the financial and administrative problems resulting from today's financially turbulent times. Financial problems have closed some centers and managed care or other health care changes will soon reach others. Managing the Residential Treatment Center in Troubled Times deals directly with current difficult financial and management problems in RTCs and presents practical advice, discussions of current problems, and possible solutions. Authors explore a wide range of topics from dealing with community hostility to planning for the future. Specifically, chapters discuss: the application of total quality management to RTCs reasons and rationale for the decline of residential establishments in England how changes in an RTC affect the youngsters who live there privatization and purchase of service contracting profit vs. nonprofit organizations one agency's experience in establishing an RTC in a resistant neighborhoodManaging the Residential Treatment Center in Troubled Times offers fresh perspectives and alternatives for professionals involved with RTCs, including directors, government regulators, social and child care workers, and psychiatrists and psychologists.

This book deals with four types of abuse: neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. For each type of abuse, selected works of fiction, literary, and professional perspectives are juxtaposed along with applications for utilizing the stories in a hypothetical therapy setting. In addition, reports of mental health workers, organizations, agencies, statistics, cases studies, and important research findings regarding each type of abuse are summarized. Web links are provided as well as information on finding the professional print resources cited. Suggestions for additional fiction suitable for bibliotherapy are provided. This is an invaluable resource for teachers, parents, and any adults interested in helping teens battling with the damage of abuse.

This work focuses on the highly controversial Project 100,000 which was initiated in the midst of the Vietnam War and the War on Poverty during the Johnson administration. With the project as a model, the authors easily show exactly how the military examined, selected, classified, trained, and utilized the one third of our nation generally considered untrainable and unemployable. In addition to providing detailed statistics on the performance of lower aptitude youth in the military for the last half-century, this work analyzes experiments conducted by the armed forces to develop effective and efficient ways to train these youths.

Some children seem to present parents, teachers, social workers and courts with such serious or disparate problems that holding them in secure accommodation is apparently the only way to control them. How this comes about, and by what criteria social workers and courts help them make these difficult decisions, are the subjects of this intriguing and innovative book. In "Secure Accommodation in Child Care", Harris and Timms use a major empirical study of children in secure accommodation as a basis for an analysis of relations between the state, the family and the "difficult" child. By synthesizing literary and social science theories, they examine court procedures and the experiences of social workers and the children themselves to explain how professionals and children make sense of their respective worlds, and how that "sense" is translated into personal or professional action. The functions of secure accommodation, although legally ascribed, are fundamentally ambigous; to "lock-up" children by means of an authorized strategy which embraces both the "sick" and the "wicked" suggests the existence of a less than obvious relation between meeting "needs", and furthering "interests".

Find remarkable prevention and treatment strategies for preschool-age children of substance abusers in this informative volume. It provides an overview of the various problems exposure to substance abuse can cause for preschool children. Because of the strong influences parents have on their children, early childhood is a critical time for intervention to counteract the damaging effects of alcohol and drug abusing parents. Research shows that attitudes about alcohol and other drugs are already formed by junior high school level, and senior high school is too late for significant attitude change. Preschoolers and Substance Abuse promotes preschool age as the ideal time to apply strategies that will aid the family in building the self-esteem, trust, autonomy, and initiative necessary to protect the child from further problems caused by addictive parents. Intervention strategies are presented in a succinct manner, making them easy for practitioners, health officials, government officials, and family members to put into immediate practice.This book offers a unique approach to substance abuse, treating it as a community and societal problem rather than an individual problem. Intervention and treatment strategies are geared toward the substance abuse problem itself as well as how it impacts children and family systems. The harmful impact of alcohol or drug abusive parents is evaluated for all stages of childhood development, from pre-natal influences through infancy and the preschool years. Some of the harmful results of alcohol and drug abuse affecting preschool children addressed in this volume include violence, sexual abuse, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and intra-uterine exposure to drugs. The authors outline a comprehensive list of imperatives for a future agenda to protect preschool children from suffering the consequences of their parents'substance abuse. Public health officials, decision makers, practitioners, and legislators will find a series of policy recommendations including increased research, substance abuse training for child care workers, increased outreach and education for expectant mothers, and community-based outreach programs to insure ethnic or socioeconomic sensitivity and appropriateness.

Find remarkable prevention and treatment strategies for preschool-age children of substance abusers in this informative volume. It provides an overview of the various problems exposure to substance abuse can cause for preschool children. Because of the strong influences parents have on their children, early childhood is a critical time for intervention to counteract the damaging effects of alcohol and drug abusing parents. Research shows that attitudes about alcohol and other drugs are already formed by junior high school level, and senior high school is too late for significant attitude change. Preschoolers and Substance Abuse promotes preschool age as the ideal time to apply strategies that will aid the family in building the self-esteem, trust, autonomy, and initiative necessary to protect the child from further problems caused by addictive parents. Intervention strategies are presented in a succinct manner, making them easy for practitioners, health officials, government officials, and family members to put into immediate practice.This book offers a unique approach to substance abuse, treating it as a community and societal problem rather than an individual problem. Intervention and treatment strategies are geared toward the substance abuse problem itself as well as how it impacts children and family systems. The harmful impact of alcohol or drug abusive parents is evaluated for all stages of childhood development, from pre-natal influences through infancy and the preschool years. Some of the harmful results of alcohol and drug abuse affecting preschool children addressed in this volume include violence, sexual abuse, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and intra-uterine exposure to drugs. The authors outline a comprehensive list of imperatives for a future agenda to protect preschool children from suffering the consequences of their parents'substance abuse. Public health officials, decision makers, practitioners, and legislators will find a series of policy recommendations including increased research, substance abuse training for child care workers, increased outreach and education for expectant mothers, and community-based outreach programs to insure ethnic or socioeconomic sensitivity and appropriateness.