Innovative Interventions in Child and Adolescent Mental Health is a unique composite of the literature on various innovative interventions for children and adolescents, and provides a developmental and neurobiological rationale for utilizing innovative interventions with this population. Based on the latest research, this book emphasizes that children and adolescents need more than just talk therapy. These innovative interventions can be applied in a variety of practice settings including schools, juvenile justice, community-based counseling centers, and residential treatment. This book bridges the gap between theory and practice, and provides a historical, theoretical, and research-based rationale, as well as a helpful case study, for each type of intervention being discussed.

This book presents a model of mental health treatment for children with serious psychiatric illnesses. The IICAPS (Intensive In-Home Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Services) program, initially implemented by the authors in 1996, offers an alternative treatment paradigm for families. Adopted at thirteen sites across Connecticut, IICAPS has proven effective in reducing the need for inpatient and other institutional-based services. Intended for health providers and planners, this book addresses the service system issues that confront child and adolescent mental health providers today. The authors fully explain and outline the IICAPS treatment approach. They conclude with a discussion of some of the unresolved challenges related to home-based care for children with serious psychiatric disorders.

In Licensing Parents, Michael McFall argues that political structures, economics, education, racism, and sexism are secondary in importance to the inequality caused by families, and that the family plays the primary role in a child's acquisition of a sense of justice. He demonstrates that examination of the family is necessary in political philosophy and that informal structures (families) and considerations (character formation) must be taken seriously. McFall advocates a threshold that should be accepted by all political philosophers: children should not be severely abused or neglected because child maltreatment often causes deep and irreparable individual and societal harm. The implications of this threshold are revolutionary, but this is not recognized fully because no philosophical book has systematically considered the ethical or political ramifications of child maltreatment. By exposing a tension between the rights of children and adults, McFall reveals pervasive ageism; parental rights usually trump children's rights, and this is often justified because children are not fully autonomous. Yet parental rights should not always trump children's rights. Ethics and political philosophy are not only about rights, but also about duties_especially when considering potential parents who are unable or unwilling to provide minimally decent nurturance. While contemporary political philosophy focuses on adult rights, McFall examines systems whereby the interests and rights of children and parents are better balanced. This entails exploring when parental rights are defeasible and defending the ethics of licensing parents, whereby some people are precluded from rearing children. He argues that, if a sense of justice is largely developed in childhood, parents directly influence the character of future generations of adults in political society. A completely stable and well-ordered society needs stable and psychologically healthy citizens in addition to just laws, and McFall demonstrates how parental love and healthy families can help achieve this.

Protected Children, Regulated Mothers examines child protection in Stalinist Hungary as part of 20th century (East Central, Eastern, and Southeastern) European history. Across the communist bloc, the increase of residential homes was preferred to the prewar system of foster care. The study challenges the transformation of state care into a tool of totalitarian power. Rather than political repression, educators mostly faced an arsenal of problems related to social and economic transformations following the end of World War II. They continued rather than cut with earlier models of reform and reformatory education. The author's original research based on hundreds of children's case files and interviews with institution leaders, teachers, and people formerly in state care demonstrates that child protection was not only to influence the behavior of children but also to regulate especially lone mothers' entrance to paid work and their sexuality. Children's homes both reinforced and changed existing patterns of the gendered division of work. A major finding of the book is that child protection had a centuries-long common history with the "solution to the Gypsy question" rooted in efforts towards the erasure of the perceived work-shyness of "Gypsies."

Because of their previous damaging experiences, many children and young people enter the care system having already developed emotional problems or at a greater risk of developing them. However, in addition to this, research and experience consistently show that being in care is likely to aggravate or worsen developmental problems. Why does public care have these negative effects on children and what is needed to alleviate their problems?

This important book looks at how children in care can best be helped to attain desirable developmental outcomes. Owusu-Bempah introduces his notion of socio-genealogical connectedness to help explain why children in kinship care fare better than children in non-relative foster care. He argues, using recent empirical research as well as a wide range of literature from the adoption field and attachment theory, that knowledge about one's hereditary background is an essential factor in looked-after children's long-term adjustment to placement. As with all children, this knowledge forms the basis of their identity, self-worth, and general outlook.

An invaluable contribution to the area, this book offers promising routes to understanding better and working more effectively with virtually all families, irrespective of their cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. It will interest researchers and students of attachment theory, adoption and fostering, child development and children's mental health.

This book captures information about early childhood education and care (ECEC) policies and practices in different countries and aims to question the degree to which these countries have managed to meet the needs of children, families, and the ECEC workforce. The book illustrates how different countries have adapted different strategies focusing on policy when it comes to quality ECEC. The goal of the book is twofold. First and foremost, it aims to present key findings and challenges for improving ECEC as a whole. Second, it aims to highlight problems and concerns which the field of ECEC faces, with respect to delivering high-quality care and education to all children. As neither "ECEC" nor "quality" are universal concepts - but are shaped by social-cultural values, as well as national, economic, and political contexts in which ECEC services are provided - this cross-country volume is extremely relevant for fully understanding issues in the field of ECEC. This book was originally published as a special issue of Early Child Development and Care.

""This important book covers developmental outcomes of children in this predicament, parenting from prison, and family reunification. It is filled with research findings and addresses clinical issues as well. Many children are affected by a parent in the criminal justice system, and this book is sorely needed. The editors and contributors have produced a wonderful resource." "Score: 94, 4 stars

"--Doody's"

This book serves as a comprehensive source for understanding and intervening with children of incarcerated parents. The text examines the daunting clinical implications inherent in trauma throughout development, as well as social and political roles in ameliorating intergenerational delinquency. This book conceptualizes the problem by using an ecological framework that is focused on the experience of the child. "Children of Incarcerated Parents "addresses developmental and clinical issues experienced throughout the trajectory of childhood and adolescence with a focus on interventions and social policies to improve outcomes for this under-studied group. The chapters explore individual, community, and national levels of policy, programming, and legislation.

Youth workers and other helping professionals regularly find themselves in situations where, despite their experience and education, they simply do not know what to do or how to respond to the circumstances facing them. This book takes up the moment of not-knowing as experienced by youth workers, providing accessible phenomenological descriptions of the experience as lived by several youth workers. In addition to exploring the five dominant themes of the experience, the book situates not-knowing in the larger context of the helping professions and the professionalization of youth work in the United States. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of not-knowing for individual youth workers, for improved practice through integrated clinical and professional supervision, and for the field as a whole.

This book will be helpful to practitioners and supervisors in youth work and other helping professions. Youth workers will be able to find themselves reflected in and readily engage with the narratives. Direct service workers and supervisors will benefit from the focuses on practical implications of not-knowing and opportunities for action to help resolve its negative outcomes. Finally, interpretive researchers and students will benefit from the step-by-step description of how to conduct phenomenological investigations.

This book was published as a special issue of Child & Youth Services.

Youth workers and other helping professionals regularly find themselves in situations where, despite their experience and education, they simply do not know what to do or how to respond to the circumstances facing them. This book takes up the moment of not-knowing as experienced by youth workers, providing accessible phenomenological descriptions of the experience as lived by several youth workers. In addition to exploring the five dominant themes of the experience, the book situates not-knowing in the larger context of the helping professions and the professionalization of youth work in the United States. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of not-knowing for individual youth workers, for improved practice through integrated clinical and professional supervision, and for the field as a whole.

This book will be helpful to practitioners and supervisors in youth work and other helping professions. Youth workers will be able to find themselves reflected in and readily engage with the narratives. Direct service workers and supervisors will benefit from the focuses on practical implications of not-knowing and opportunities for action to help resolve its negative outcomes. Finally, interpretive researchers and students will benefit from the step-by-step description of how to conduct phenomenological investigations.

This book was published as a special issue of Child & Youth Services.

This book provides an interdisciplinary framework for school intervention into child and adolescent maltreatment, highlighting the unique potential for schools to identify and mitigate the long-term impacts of childhood trauma on children's educational well-being. Contributors evaluate recent efforts to incorporate trauma-informed approaches into schools, including strategic planning by administrators, staff training, prevention programming, liaising with local youth service agencies, and trauma-sensitive intervention with affected students. Among the topics discussed:* The developmental impact of trauma* The role of schools and teachers in supporting student mental health* Prevention programming to prevent child and adolescent sexual abuse* Education policies to support students with traumatic histories* Responding to childhood trauma at both macro and microsystem levels Trauma-Informed Schools: Integrating Child Maltreatment Prevention, Detection, and Intervention is a valuable resource for child maltreatment researchers, educational and school psychologists, school social workers, students in early childhood and K-12 education, and education policy makers at all levels of government. It offers the necessary guidelines and insights to facilitate better learning for students who have experienced trauma, aiming to improve student well-being both inside and outside the classroom.

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.

Over the last decade there has been dramatically increased interest in the ways that technology has been used in the abuse and exploitation of children, due in part to increasing numbers of convictions for child pornography-related offenses. Opinion swings between those who feel that there is a danger of distorting the threat posed to children by technology, and those for whom it appears that the threat has been grossly underestimated. Current literature surrounding the debate at times seems to create more questions than answers and what quickly becomes apparent is that the data we have to inform our understanding is partial, potentially context specific, and at times seemingly contradictory. This book broadens our understanding of the complex nature of online sexual exploitation of children and considers the risk that those engaged in Internet-related offences pose to children in both the online and offline environments. It focuses on cutting-edge research and conceptual thinking that views perpetrators within context, examines those impacted by such offending, describes emerging legal and policy issues, and proposes innovative strategies for prevention within a dynamic global environment. Understanding and Preventing Online Sexual Exploitation of Children responds to the growing call for help across all practice areas, from judicial to therapeutic, and will provide an invaluable resource for practitioners and policy makers working in the field, as well as students and academics studying sexual exploitation and cyber crime.

This timely new book presents the concepts, context, and applications of a problem-solving approach to group work with children and adolescents. This comprehensive new volume covers it all. It addresses issues associated with assessment, problem recognition, planning and composition, leadership, and activities in a wide range of settings when working with children and adolescents. Phases of group work, practice guidelines, and evaluation are also thoroughly considered. Significant applications focus on group work with children and adolescents from families in which divorce has occurred; group work to improve peer relationships and social competence; group work with children and adolescents who are at risk for developing mental health and substance abuse disorders; and school performance group work. To help illustrate key points, a lively case example is provided for each application. A practical volume for practitioners in the helping professions, Group Work with Children and Adolescents will be highly valuable to those practicing in the fields of social work, human services, clinical and counseling psychology, and psychiatric nursing.

Childhood in America has changed, and not for the better. From day care for babies, to the exhausting array of activities for children, to the storm of lurid and violent shows now deemed appropriate for the young, to the expectation that teenagers build resumes, childhood has been thoroughly redefined. Anne R. Pierce argues that this radical re-definition has been embraced with remarkably little discussion about what children, by nature, need.

Pierce submits that we have latched onto opinions about childrearing that are potentially harmful to children. If traditions are choices to be embraced or abandoned at our discretion, and adult self-fulfillment is a primary determinant in those choices, the fundamentals of the well-wrought childhood are easily forgotten. Steeped in intellectual permissiveness, we have convinced ourselves that parental substitutes are as good as parents themselves at caring for children, that the concepts of nurture and of the maternal are archaic and irrelevant, that more lessons and sports are better than less and that the earlier one embarks upon them the better, and that innocence and knowledge are less important than worldly attitudes and competitive skills.

Understanding and challenging the theories and agendas behind childrearing trends is a pressing need, and the subject of this book. Pierce takes an honest look at the evidence on the effects of daycare and of hyper-structuring children. She gives voice to the many intelligent and estimable educators, child-development experts, researchers, and social commentators who are ignored because their conclusions are hard to bear. Equally important, Pierce says, is attention to that inner tug of love and conscience, which many of us have been programmed to ignore.Modern American children are expected to adjust and to understand as adults would the complexities and vicissitudes of public as opposed to private life. For them, childhood is fast becoming a distant memory. Could it be that America's thrust forward leaves children without a solid foundation upon which to grow? This is the sobering question asked, and answered, in this challenging book.

In Licensing Parents, Michael McFall argues that political structures, economics, education, racism, and sexism are secondary in importance to the inequality caused by families, and that the family plays the primary role in a child's acquisition of a sense of justice. He demonstrates that examination of the family is necessary in political philosophy and that informal structures (families) and considerations (character formation) must be taken seriously. McFall advocates a threshold that should be accepted by all political philosophers: children should not be severely abused or neglected because child maltreatment often causes deep and irreparable individual and societal harm. The implications of this threshold are revolutionary, but this is not recognized fully because no philosophical book has systematically considered the ethical or political ramifications of child maltreatment. By exposing a tension between the rights of children and adults, McFall reveals pervasive ageism; parental rights usually trump children's rights, and this is often justified because children are not fully autonomous. Yet parental rights should not always trump children's rights. Ethics and political philosophy are not only about rights, but also about duties especially when considering potential parents who are unable or unwilling to provide minimally decent nurturance. While contemporary political philosophy focuses on adult rights, McFall examines systems whereby the interests and rights of children and parents are better balanced. This entails exploring when parental rights are defeasible and defending the ethics of licensing parents, whereby some people are precluded from rearing children. He argues that, if a sense of justice is largely developed in childhood, parents directly influence the character of future generations of adults in political society. A completely stable and well-ordered society needs stable and psychologically healthy citizens in addition to just laws, and McFall demonstrates how parental love"

Edited by one of the leading authorities in international child care, this sourcebook provides valuable insights from international experiments in group child care. The selections, written by distinguished international child care experts, explore a broad range of successful group care settings in Austria, Great Britain, Israel, Mexico, Poland, the Soviet Union, the United States and Yugoslavia. Much of the material was previously unknown to American professionals, at the time of the original publication, who, for the most part, held group care in disrepute. Today, there is a growing interest in group programs for children of various ages and in settings ranging from day care programs to institutions and schools of various types.

"Successful Group Care" is divided into six major parts. The first of which is a general review of successful group care, drawing upon material that appears later in the book. Subsequent sections present historical and philosophical issues in group care, including boarding schools in the former Soviet Union and the Israeli Kibbutz. Research studies analyzing the negative and positive effects of group care for young children and several teenage group environments are discussed, particularly with regard to their peer effect on values and moral character. The project also deals with group care of disturbed children. The book ends with the most complete bibliography on the subject, including some of the most significant works in Polish, Russian, German, and Hebrew.

This book will be invaluable to all those interested in and involved in group child care: social workers, particularly in child welfare; developmental child psychologists; early childhood educators; child psychiatrists; family sociologists; child care workers; day care personnel; and students in social work courses in childhood and adolescence, early childhood education, developmental psychology, and in training courses for day care personnel and child care workers.

"Martin Wolins" was professor in the School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley. He is author of numerous articles on child care and group care. Among his books are "Selecting Foster Parents: The Ideal and the Reality, Institution or Foster Family: A Century of Debate" (with Irving Piliavin) and "Group Care: An Israeli Approach" (edited with Meir Gottesmann).

The true measure of any society is how it treats its children, who are in turn that society's future. Making use of data from the longitudinal Chinese Family Panel Studies survey, the authors of this timely study provide a multi-faceted description and analysis of China's younger generations. They assess the economic, physical, and social-emotional well-being as well as the cognitive performance and educational attainment of China's children and youth. They pay special attention to the significance of family and community contexts, including the impact of parental absence on millions of left-behind children. Throughout the volume, the authors delineate various forms of disparities, especially the structural inequalities maintained by the Chinese Party-state and the vulnerabilities of children and youth in fragile families and communities. They also analyze the social attitudes and values of Chinese youth. Having grown up in a period of sustained prosperity and greater individual choice, the younger Chinese cohorts are more independent in spirit, more open-minded socially, and significantly less deferential to authority than older cohorts. There is growing recognition in China of the importance of investing in children's future and of helping the less advantaged. Substantial improvements in child and youth well-being have been achieved in a time of growing economic prosperity. Strong political commitment is needed to sustain existing efforts and to overcome the many obstacles that remain. This book will be of considerable interest to researchers of Chinese society and development.

Best Practices in Residential Treatment is a detailed examination of the latest information on empirically tested, evidence-based interventions and procedures across the many dimensions of residential treatment practice. Respected authorities from a broad range of professions provide a truly interdisciplinary look into the various diverse aspects of the treatment of children and youths in a residential setting. The book brings the most current information available on best practices, cultural competence, substance abuse, facility management, medication management, and planning for community reentry. This book provides the latest in research and practical techniques for the unique treatment program. This helpful resource extensively discusses effective counseling interventions, medication management approaches, facility management issues, and aftercare approaches to ensure successful outcomes for children and adolescents leaving a facility. The book's comprehensive nature offers practitioners the most current information on best practices in the residential treatment arena and can serve as a useful resource for future decision-making. This volume is extensively referenced and includes tables to clearly present data. This book is a valuable resource for social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, residential program administrators, state departments of children's services, educators, and students at all levels. This book was published as a special issue of Residential Treatment For Children & Youth.

Best Practices in Residential Treatment is a detailed examination of the latest information on empirically tested, evidence-based interventions and procedures across the many dimensions of residential treatment practice. Respected authorities from a broad range of professions provide a truly interdisciplinary look into the various diverse aspects of the treatment of children and youths in a residential setting. The book brings the most current information available on best practices, cultural competence, substance abuse, facility management, medication management, and planning for community reentry. This book provides the latest in research and practical techniques for the unique treatment program. This helpful resource extensively discusses effective counseling interventions, medication management approaches, facility management issues, and aftercare approaches to ensure successful outcomes for children and adolescents leaving a facility. The book's comprehensive nature offers practitioners the most current information on best practices in the residential treatment arena and can serve as a useful resource for future decision-making. This volume is extensively referenced and includes tables to clearly present data. This book is a valuable resource for social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, residential program administrators, state departments of children's services, educators, and students at all levels. This book was published as a special issue of Residential Treatment For Children & Youth.

"Early Child Care" is about the very young child--infant, toddler, and early preschool--in today's world. It grew out of a series of conferences sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Children's Hospital of Washington, D.C., and the Committee on Day Care of the Maternal and Child Health Section of the American Public Health Association. Each of the sponsoring agencies represents a focal point for pressures from groups concerned with improving the care of the young child. Faced with common concern, the three sponsoring agencies brought together a number of experts in the field to pool information and experience and to review research findings as a basis for sound planning for children less than three years of age.

The authors included in "Early Child Care" are pioneers in the true sense of the word.. Until recently, no one has tried to specify exactly what goes on between mother and her baby, who does what to whom in the exchange, and what happens if, instead of one mother, there is no mother, an alternating day and night mother, or many different substitutes for the mother. Until all that transpires between the mother and her baby in the best of circumstances is comprehended in sufficient detail that it can be confidently reproduced, it is impossible to make alternative plans. "Early Child Care" is an effort to identify what is known about young children and apply it to day-by-day programming.

Millions of mothers give their babies a good start, providing devoted and painstaking care. Such mothers somehow know when a child needs to be let alone--and when to respond. This volume attempts to define how such instincts can be reproduced in other settings.

"Caroline A. Chandler" was a consultant in child mental health and early child care at the Center for Studies of Child and Family Mental Health, National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland. "Reginald S. Lourie" was director of the department of psychiatry at the Children's Hospital, Washington D. C. and the founder of The Reginald S. Lourie Center for Infants and Young Children in Maryland. "Ann DeHuff Peters" was associate professor of maternal and child health at the School of Public Health, University of North Carolina. "Laura L. Dittmann" was professor emeritus in the department of human development/Institute for Child Study at the University of Maryland.

This book focuses on adoptive families after the legal finalization of the adoption has taken place. The authors, Susan Livingston Smith and Jeanne A. Howard, incorporate the findings of their own unique research project on troubled adoptive families with other empirical research, theory, practice, and knowledge. This volume is rich with case examples, detailed case histories, presentations of various practice strategies, and resources. The overall result is a stand-alone volume offering a clear and well-documented overview of the topic. It will be invaluable to social workers and other professionals working with children and families.

First published in 1986, this study explores the increased public concern with policies of 'community care' and their effects on informal carers, at that time. It looks at the widespread evidence that one particular group of informal carers- parents looking after their severely disabled child- lack information, advice and a co-ordinated pattern of supporting services. The author, who carried out research on disabled children and their families for a number of years, describes in detail a low-cost experimental project in which specialist social workers set out to remedy these shortcomings. Drawing on the results of this particular study, the author argues strongly for widespread assignment of 'key' social workers to this and other groups of informal carers. Despite being written in the mid-1980s, this book discusses topic that will still be of interest and use today.

The welfare of children with mentally ill parents: Learning from inter-country comparisons looks at different approaches to supporting families in ten European countries and one state in Australia. These families have complex needs, and a wide range of agencies in mental health and social services may be involved. This can lead to problems of liaison and co-operation between different agencies and different disciplines.

A vivid picture of service provisions and the way in which legislation can operate in different countries emerges in the book. Professionals identified common problems and effective responses which were used to build a European model of good practice. This takes into account the nature of the difficulties facing families and the strengths and weaknesses of different national systems. The model is used a basis for analysing the particular problems of the English system and the authors suggest ways forward.

This important volume is essential reading for practitioners, managers, academics and students in the fields of social work, mental health and social policy. It is also a key source of reference for policy makers in mental health and social welfare, and for mental health and child welfare pressure groups.

With standardized testing and predetermined subgroups garnering the attention of educational leaders, abused and neglected children have fallen deeper into the crevice of the system. For years these children have been ignored, save the obvious, visible bruises or child-initiated confessions. Because researching children is difficult without parental consent, it is nearly impossible to expose this problem with any level of legitimacy. By combining research from scientific research and the humanities, autobiographical flashbacks fuse with narratives that vividly detail the author's disturbing encounters with abused children as a school administrator. The effect is the realization that public schools unknowingly feed on weaker children beneath the awning of accountability.

It is difficult to understand how society could have failed to recognize that children in abusive situations often live in families in which alcohol and other drugs are abused. Aimed at fostering more discussion between practitioners and scholars, this book explores unified approaches for prevention of and treatment for children and their parents who find themselves in these circumstances. The multidisciplinary cast of contributors probes such topics as the history of abusive behavior and intoxication using literary examples to illustrate key points; the research literature on drug-exposed children in the child welfare system and the interventions that facilitate their optimum development; the legislative and policy contexts in which potential collaborations between the fields of substance abuse and child welfare are being developed or abandoned; the damaging effects that parental and family substance abuse add to a host of child welfare problems; the need for clinicians to develop a sound therapeutic foundation to enhance their effectiveness with clients; and the search for solutions within drug-abuse treatment systems to develop services that improve the quality of life for children living with a drug-dependent parent. In addition, many contributors use writing devices to enhance comprehension of the issues. For example, one contributor uses a metaphor to examine what is important in the fields of substance abuse and child welfare, how we would begin to link them, what the stresses on this bridge would be, and why anyone would want to cross it. And, another contributor uses examples of successful collaborative efforts to examine the institutional, professional, and interpersonal barriers to collaboration between the fields of child welfare and substance abuse as well as the principles for overcoming these barriers. The book concludes with a provocative chapter that reminds us that not all substance abusers are child abusers. This book will help readers identify promising approaches to improve our nation?s health and the gaps that need to be bridged in order for meaningful improvement to occur.