The notion of 'vulnerability' is now a prominent motif in social policy in the UK and beyond, with important implications for those deemed 'vulnerable'. Yet the effects of recalibrating welfare and criminal justice processes on the basis of vulnerability often escape attention. This distinctive book draws together lived experiences of vulnerability with academic and practical applications of the concept, exploring the repercussions of a 'vulnerability zeitgeist' in UK policy and practice. Through a focus on the voices and perspectives of 'vulnerable' young people and the professionals who support them, it questions how far the rise of vulnerability serves the interests of disadvantaged citizens. Illuminating where support shades into more controlling practices, the book is important reading for scholars, students and policy-makers interested in exclusion, precariousness, deviance and youth.

Innovations in Child and Family Policy tackles many of the common problems and challenges that are considered to be at the heart of child and family policy: family creation, economic support, childrearing, and family care-giving. Innovations begins by defining child and family policy and discussing the history of this growing specialization within the social sciences. The main chapters of Innovations address policy and programmatic solutions to problems that face families by topic area: (1) early childhood and education, (2) government interventions with family violence, children's welfare, and the justice system, and (3) supports for children and families. Specifically, the chapters in Innovations address the availability of child care, family medical leave, special needs children, parent involvement in their children's education, preventing and addressing child abuse and neglect, children who witness partner violence, child support orders, children of incarcerated fathers, and young adults in the justice system. What makes this book unique is that it contains applied research from many program evaluations or assessments of existing state-level legislation. Social scientists from multiple disciplines examine the efficacy such programs and policies to make recommendations for expanded or new child and family policies. For our novice and/or student readers, we hope that Innovations will help them to develop a greater sense of what academics, professionals, and politicians mean when they speak of "child and family policy" and also an appreciation for how social science research can contribute to policy-making to support children and families. For our more advanced readers, we hope that these chapters make a significant contribution to the conversations regarding how multidisciplinary social science research can inform policy recommendations. For all of our readers, we hope that the use-inspired research presented in Innovations will help to strengthen and support the we

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.

In this provocative history of parenting, Harry Hendrick analyses the social and economic reasons behind parenting trends. He shows how broader social changes, including neoliberalism, feminism, the collapse of the social-democratic ideal, and the 'new behaviourism', have led to the rise of the anxious and narcissistic parent. The book charts the shift from the liberal and progressive parenting styles of the 1940s-70s, to the more 'behavioural', punitive and managerial methods of childrearing today, made popular by 'experts' such as Gina Ford and Supernanny Jo Frost, and by New Labour's parent education programmes. This trend, Hendrick argues, is symptomatic of the sour, mean-spirited and vindictive social norms found throughout society today. It undermines the better instincts of parents and, therefore, damages parent-child relations. Instead, he proposes, parents should focus on understanding and helping their children as they work at growing up.

'.a valuable resource book for teachers, child care workers and school administrators on preventing, identifying and handling cases of child abuse and neglect. [It includes] a unique international perspective on child protection.' Associate Professor Sandy K Wurtele, University of Colorado 'Many books stop at the what should be done, but this book goes beyond that to tell us the how. It is sound, practical and most welcomed.' Wilma Bartlett, The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, UK Teachers and early childhood workers are the only professionals in contact with abused children for long periods of time. Although they are seldom aware of their importance, they can provide the child's best defence against abuse. Abused children exhibit identifiable behaviours and perform less well in school than their peers. Educators and caregivers can learn to observe children's development and respond to their special needs. Schools have always taken responsibility for teaching children to stay safe from traffic, fire, water and electricity. They are also in the best position for teaching children to stay safe with people. Child Protection is a comprehensive guide to the common forms of child abuse and neglect. It offers practical help for the identification of child abuse and neglect and the support of the child victims and, in particular, the provision of curriculum for child protection. Freda Briggs, formerly a teacher and social worker is Professor Child Development at the University of South Australia. She is also the author of From Victim To Offender, Why My Child?, Developing Personal Safety Skills In Children With Disabilities, Keep Children Safe and Child Sexual Abuse: Confronting The Problem. Russell Hawkins is a psychologist in private practice and a senior lecturer in Psychology at the University of South Australia.

In this provocative history of parenting, Harry Hendrick analyses the social and economic reasons behind parenting trends. He shows how broader social changes, including neoliberalism, feminism, the collapse of the social-democratic ideal, and the 'new behaviourism', have led to the rise of the anxious and narcissistic parent.

The five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, are well-known for their extensive welfare system and gender equality which provides both parents with opportunities to earn and care for their children. In this topical book, expert scholars from the Nordic countries, as well as UK and the US, demonstrate how modern fatherhood is supported in the Nordic setting through family and social policies, and how these contribute to shaping and influencing the images, roles and practices of fathers in a diversity of family settings and variations of fatherhoods. This comprehensive volume will have wide international appeal for those who look to Nordic countries and their success in creating gender equal societies.

Investigating the experiences of a group of female students as they journey into and through higher education, and into work with and for children, Journeys through Childhood Studies offers a critical analysis of the intersectional influences and effects of social division on experiences of higher education and career trajectories. The book explores the influences of gender, race, and class on the experiences of higher education and the development of professional identities, and whether the professionalisation of work in relation to children and childhood opens up opportunities for career development or narrows the range of choices available to women. Adopting a distinctive qualitative approach to track strategies used by women participants to accommodate the changing terrain of their journeys, this book demonstrates how the women's pathways to university are shaped by factors such as social divisions, friends, family, and school, and their experiences of working with children. Featuring detailed interviews, Journeys through Childhood Studies offers an insightful exploration of the construction and practices of the Children's Workforce. It is a must-read for academics, postgraduate students, and those researching Childhood Studies, professional identities, and experiences of higher education.

In this outspoken and challenging book, Sarah Nelson argues that progress in addressing childhood sexual abuse has been in fearful or complacent retreat and that change is urgently needed in order to prevent abuse occurring, and to better support survivors. From this starting point, she puts forward radical suggestions for new models of practice. These are designed to provide perpetrator-focussed child protection, to encourage community approaches to prevention, and to better support those who have survived abuse. As revelations of widespread child abuse continue to emerge at an unprecedented rate, this book campaigns for change, offering policy makers and practitioners solutions for new ways in tackling sexual abuse, working alongside survivors to reduce its prevalence and impact.

Now in its fourth edition, this is the classic assessment of the state of child well-being in the United Kingdom. This edition has been updated to review the latest evidence, examining the outcomes for children of the impact of the economic crisis and austerity measures since 2008. It is an invaluable resource for academics, students, practitioners and policy makers concerned with child welfare and wellbeing.

This book is a detailed study of children's everyday practices in a small, deprived neighbourhood of post-socialist Bratislava, called Kopcany. It provides a novel empirical insight on what it is like to be growing up after 25 years of post-socialist transformations and questions the formation of children's agency and the multitude of resources it comes from. What happens if we accept children's practices as cornerstones of communities? What is uncovered if we examine adults' co-presence with children in everyday community spaces? With a background in youth work, the author writes from the unique position of being able to develop in-depth insights into both children's life-worlds, and practitioners' priorities and needs.

Growing up in care is not just a part of childhood, but can have ongoing impacts across a person's life. Various inquiries have revealed accounts of abuse and neglect, and a fracturing of family relationships. Organised thematically to allow comparison of different initiatives, this book considers the range of responses to adult care leavers in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK. Initiatives examined include public inquiries, symbolic acknowledgements, redress schemes, specialist support services, access to personal records and family reunification programs. Featuring detailed case studies and examples of good practice, this is an excellent international source book for practitioners and policy makers in social work and social care.

Key Thinkers in Childhood Studies presents the contrasting perspectives of some of the leading figures involved in shaping the field of Childhood Studies over the last 30 years. Using in-depth interviews, twenty-two high profile pioneers, who represent a range of disciplines and nationalities, share personal and unpublished accounts of their work and careers. They reflect upon the significant changes that have taken place in the study of children and childhood, discuss the evolution of ideas underpinning the field, examine current tensions and dilemmas and explore challenges for the future. This book fills a gap by offering important insights into researchers' experiences in Childhood Studies and their ideas about the central issues confronting the field. It will be of interest to students, practitioners and experienced academics from all disciplinary backgrounds who are seeking to contextualise, understand and advance our understanding of childhood, children and youth.

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.

Funding Philanthropy investigates Dr Barnardo's work and philanthropic 'empire' as early manifestations of promotional and branding mechanisms in the mid- to late-Victorian period, processes that would seem commonplace by the mid- to late-twentieth century. Barnardo possessed a strategic sense of what would excite people's interest and pity, as well as a seemingly unfailing capacity to package and promote evangelical philanthropy on behalf of children, the nation and the Empire. Thus, the book explores Barnardo as creative promoter and 'showman,' a savvy entrepreneur in an evangelical context that overtly mandated against privileging business principles generally, and the practice of direct appeal specifically. To manage the business of philanthropy, Barnardo operated as narrator, orchestrator, and showman, depending upon artfully constructed bodies, images and stories as imperatives for emotional engagement and collective participation. Funding Philanthropy offers new knowledge to anyone interested in Victorian history, conceptualising children, literary modes, and marketing practices. The book also considers how Barnardo's conception of charity is closely aligned with principles of unconditional hospitality, precisely at a moment in time when the English were intent on centralising philanthropy and on meting out support according to measures Barnardo regarded as punitive and unchristian. Part One explicates how institutional branding evolved according to the properties associated with the metaphor of the 'open door'; Part Two elucidates how narrative devices associated with fiction raise both affect and funds; Part Three concentrates on how Barnardo exploited strategies associated with dramatic performance in public spectacles, despite his adamant strictures against the theatre itself. Discussion burrows down to elucidate such events as highly ritualised Annual General Meetings, child picnics, as well as ubiquitous 'bazaars' and self-denial drives. Extensive research in Barnardo's vast archive of periodical publication for children, youth and adults and the wider public press underpin the discursive analysis.

Play is fundamental to children's health, wellbeing and development. Yet in the modern world, their space and opportunity to play is under threat. This is the first book to look in detail at children's play within public policy. Using the UK government's play strategy for England (2008-10) as a detailed case study, it explores states' obligations to children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the General Comment of 2013. It presents evidence that strategies for public health, education and even environmental sustainability would be more effective with a better-informed perspective about the nature of play and the importance of allowing children more time and space for it. The book throws down a challenge to both play advocates and governments, to make effective policy that respects, protects and fulfils children's right to play as a priority. It is an essential tool for practitioners and campaigners around the world.

The focus of this book is on different aspects of leadership and governess for learning in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector, which serves children aged 1-5 years. Internationally, the discourse on the ECEC sector is interwoven with the discourse on early intervention, where ECEC is viewed as laying the foundation for lifelong learning, eliminating child poverty, and fostering social inclusion within an increasingly diverse population.

In this readable book, Zvi Levy, Hadassim's Director, provides a careful account of how, over time, he and others have shaped a community to foster health, identity, and competence in distressed young people. Canadian WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organization) Hadassim is a thriving youth village in Israel that is home for 500 young people and a day educational program for an additional 1,000. Negotiating Positive Identity in a Residential Group Care Community illustrates the organizational expression of a developmental idea, in this case Erik Erikson's identity development theory, to show how an environment can be created to cope with disrupted development processes among children and adolescents. The book describes an ongoing experiment that started fifteen years ago and has since been recognized as an outstanding success. The basic information and ideas expressed by Levy can be used to improve the effectiveness of any framework through which adolescents pass during the stages of development, including schools, community centers, and normal families. Some of the main topics discussed in this volume are: principles for running a multicultural facility organization of the daily life of a large residential setting major parameters in a residential setting as derived from the theories of Erik Erikson on adolescence as a developmental stage comprehensive care for youth in transition and adolescents suffering from aggravated identity crisesAll child and youth care workers and program administrators can learn much from Levy's account of Hadassim. Negotiating Positive Identity in a Residential Group Care Community will be disturbing to many who adhere to the current tenets of good management and child care practice; readers need to be prepared to have many assumptions and beliefs challenged. The book emphasizes the distress of immigrant and troubled urban youth as an aggravated identity crisis, the cause of which needs to be treated before the symptom. This volume is of interest to theoreticians, practitioners, and policymakers in the fields of education, child and youth care, and developmental psychology, as well as scholars in Erikson's theories. It is also useful in courses which study education in Israel or that seek solutions to problems such as homeless youth in the Third World.Negotiating Positive Identity in a Residential Group Care Community stresses that: The answer to deprivation is not the provision of efficient services, but an environment and an approach that encourages adolescents to see themselves as active participants and not as patients or passive inmates. Residential settings for children and adolescents can successfully handle large numbers and, in fact, larger numbers can offer some definite advantages. The best way to help children develop into autonomous adults is to give them responsibility for their own choices within the framework of a goal-oriented community.

Early education and care has become a central policy area in many countries. As services expand rapidly, it is crucial to examine whether children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive provision of the highest possible quality. In this original, topical book, leading experts from eight countries examine how early education and care is organised, funded and regulated in their countries. Bringing together recent statistical evidence, the book gives an up-to-date picture of access to services by different groups, providing rich insights on how policies play out in practice, and the extent to which they help or hinder disadvantaged children to receive high quality provision. An equal start? reveals the common tensions and complexities countries face in ensuring that early education and care is affordable, accessible and of high quality. Its critical examination of the potential for better policies ensures that An equal start? will be of interest to academic readers as well as policy makers and practitioners.

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.

This unique text bridges multiculturalism and humanistic psychology, demonstrating how these areas can be effectively integrated to provide a foundation for engaging youth in the global community. Adapting the tenets of humanistic psychology for a modern, multicultural audience, Empowering Children: A Multicultural Humanistic Approach uses an after-school program called Kidz n' Coaches to exemplify the ways in which community out-reach and humanistic psychology can be used together to meet the needs of diverse populations. Chapters also discuss issues of border cultures, with a focus on communities along the Mexican-American border, and offer practical tools for those looking to found their own community out-reach programs. Through a detailed case study and phenomenological study results, this book offers an immersive framework for multicultural humanistic psychology that will be of value to researchers and professionals alike.

This book provides new and empirically grounded research-based knowledge and insights into the current transformation of the Russian child welfare system. It focuses on the major shift in Russia's child welfare policy: deinstitutionalisation of the system of children's homes inherited from the Soviet era and an increase in fostering and adoption. Divided into four sections, this book details both the changing role and function of residential institutions within the Russian child welfare system and the rapidly developing form of alternative care in foster families, as well as work undertaken with birth families. By analysing the consequences of deinstitutionalisation and its effects on children and young people as well as their foster and birth parents, it provides a model for understanding this process across the whole of the post-Soviet space. It will be of interest to academics and students of social work, sociology, child welfare, social policy, political science, and Russian and East European politics more generally.

Recent debates surrounding children in State care, parental rights, and abuse in Ireland's industrial schools, concern issues that are rooted in the historical record. By examining the social problems addressed by philanthropists and child protection workers from the nineteenth century, we can begin to understand more about the treatment of children and the family today. In Ireland, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) was the principle organisation involved in investigating families and protecting children. The 'cruelty men', as NSPCC inspectors were known, acted as child protection workers and 'children's police'. This book looks at their history as well as the history of Ireland's industrial schools, poverty in Irish families, changing ideas around childhood and parenthood and the lives of children in Ireland from 1838 to 1970. It is a history filled with stories of real families, families often at the mercy of the State, the Catholic Church and voluntary organisations. It is a must-read for all with an interest in the Irish family and Irish childhood past and present. -- .

During the past several decades, interest in children's psychological disorders has grown steadily within the research community, resulting in a burgeoning knowledge base. The majority of the attention and funding, not surprisingly, has focused on the more prevalent and well-known conditions. Although this raises the odds that young people with more well-known disorders such as ADHD, autism, and learning disorders will receive much-needed professional assessment and intervention, children with less frequently encountered disorders may experience a higher risk of misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment.

Useful data has been scattered throughout the literature for severe-but-less-frequent childhood psychological disorders, including: fire setting; gender identity disorder; impulse control disorders (i.e., kleptomania, trichotillomania, intermittent explosive disorder); selective mutism; Munchausen by proxy; childhood schizophrenia; gang involvement; sexual offending; self-injurious behavior; and feral children. This concise volume offers up-to-date information on these conditions, which, though relatively rare, may have profound effect not only on the children themselves but also their families, friends, and the community at large. Coverage of each disorder is presented in an accessible format covering:

Overview and history.Description and diagnostic classification, with proposed changes to the DSM-V.Etiology and theory.Assessment tools and interview protocols.Commonly used psychological and pharmacological treatment options.Current research issues and directions for future investigation.

"Assessing and Treating Low Incidence/High Severity Psychological Disorders of Childhood" is a must-have reference for researchers, clinicians, practitioners, and graduate students in clinical child and school psychology, pediatrics, psychiatry, social work, school counseling, education, and public policy.

This ethnographic exploration of contemporary spaces of homelessness takes an expanded view of homeless space, threading together experiences of organizational spaces, routes taken through the city and the occupation of public space. Through engaging with participants' accounts of movement and place, the book argues that young homeless people become fixed in mobility, a condition that impacts on both everyday life and possible futures. Based on an innovative multi-method study of a day centre in London for young homeless people, the book contextualizes spaces of homelessness within the social relations and flows of people that produce the world city. The book considers how the biographical and everyday trajectories of young homeless people intersect with place attachments and forms of governance to produce urban homeless spaces. It provides a new angle on the city made by movement, foregrounding the impact of mobilities shaped by loss, violence and the search for opportunity. The book draws on mental maps, photography, interviews and observation in order to produce an engaging and rich ethnographic account of young homeless people in the city.