This path-breaking book brings together an international list of contributors to collectively articulate a vision for the field of youth work, sharing what they have learned from decades of experience in the training and education of youth workers. Carefully designed evaluation and research studies have legitimized the learning potential of youth programs and non-school organizations over the last twenty years, and recent attention has shifted towards the education, training and on-going professional development of youth workers. Contributors define youth work across domains of practice and address the disciplines of knowledge upon which sound practice is based, reviewing examples of youth practitioner development both in and outside of academia. Raising critical questions and concerns about current trends, Advancing Youth Work aims to bring clarity to the field and future of youth work.

Advancing Youth Work will help youth work practitioners develop a common language, articulate their field in one voice, and create a shared understanding of similarities and differences. This book is also an invaluable resource for higher educators, researchers, and students involved with youth work.

For over a decade and with the best of intentions, the U.K. government has spent millions attempting, but largely failing, to improve personal, social and educational outcomes for children and young people in public care. In this book, the authors explain why the problems of this highly vulnerable group have resisted such effort, energy and expenditure and go on to show how achieving positive outcomes for children in care is possible when the root causes of failure are tackled.

Topic covered include:

- The power of parenting

- The impact of parental rejection on emotional development

- Support for the adaptive emotional development of children and young people

- Practical advice on introducing the 'Authentic Warmth' approach into existing childcare organisations

- Future issues in childcare

This book is essential reading for carers, commissioners, policymakers, support professionals, designated teachers and students of social work.

This path-breaking book brings together an international list of contributors to collectively articulate a vision for the field of youth work, sharing what they have learned from decades of experience in the training and education of youth workers. Carefully designed evaluation and research studies have legitimized the learning potential of youth programs and non-school organizations over the last twenty years, and recent attention has shifted towards the education, training, and on-going professional development of youth workers. Contributors define youth work across domains of practice and address the disciplines of knowledge upon which sound practice is based, reviewing examples of youth practitioner development both in and outside of academia. Raising critical questions and concerns about current trends, Advancing Youth Work aims to bring clarity to the field and future of youth work.

Advancing Youth Work will help youth work practitioners develop a common language, articulate their field in one voice, and create a shared understanding of similarities and differences. This book is also an invaluable resource for higher educators, researchers, and students involved with youth work.

Editor Nancy Chase defines parentified children as parents to their parents?those are the children who are compelled to fulfill the role of parent at the expense of their own developmentally appropriate needs and pursuits. With uncanny sensibilities, these children are attuned to their parents? moods, wishes, vulnerabilities, and nuances. This volume is a comprehensive study of parentification in the family, covering both theoretical as well as clinical topics. Contributors have written chapters that are grouped into two sections: theory and research, and clinical and broader contextual perspectives. Part One of this book covers research related to parentification and gender, work addiction, families with a disabled or chronically ill child, and assessment for clinical or research practices. The chapters having a stronger clinical or contextual emphasis address varied interventions and theoretical orientations and posit parentification in cultural and ethnic contexts. Students, academics, and professionals in areas of family studies, social work, child abuse, developmental psychology, school psychology, and family therapy will find Burdened Children an excellent resource on this phenomenon.

Focuses on developmental and therapeutic needs of these traumatized children in middle childhood, between the ages of seven and eleven. Integrating self psychology and family systems perspectives, the author draws upon current research findings that demonstrate why children do not automatically ""recover"" as a result of parental abstinence.

This book brings together internationally renowned academics and professionals from a variety of disciplines who, in a variety of ways, seek to understand the legal, conceptual and practical consequences of parental imprisonment through a children's rights lens. Children whose parents have been incarcerated are often referred to as "invisible victims of crime and the penal system." It is well accepted that the imprisonment of a parent, even for a short period of time, not only negatively affects the lives of children but it can also result in a gross violation of their fundamental human rights, such as the right of access to their parent and the right to have an input into decision-making processes affecting them, the outcomes of which will without doubt affect the life of the child concerned. This collection foregrounds the voice of these children as it explores transdisciplinary boundaries and examines the practice and development of the rights of both children and their families within the wider dynamic of criminal justice and penology practice. The text is divided into three parts which are dedicated to 1) hearing the voices of children with parents in prison, 2) understanding to what extent children's rights informs prison policy, and 3) demonstrating how law in the form of children's rights can help frame both court sentencing and prison practice in a way that minimises the harm that contact with the prison system can cause. The research drawn upon in this book has been conducted in a number of European countries and demonstrates both good and bad practice as far as the implementation of children's rights is concerned in the context of parental incarceration. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of law, children's rights, criminology, sociology, social work, psychology, penology and all those interested in, and working towards, protecting the rights of children who have a parent in prison.

Designed to be a one-stop-shop to meet the needs of local communities, Children's Centres represent a revolutionary shift in the way children's services are delivered to families. Integrated Children's Centres looks at the way in which Children's Centre development has built upon the research and experiences of initiatives such as the HeadStart programme in America and the SureStart programme. Exploring the component elements of truly integrative services and the key players in ensuring positive outcomes: families, the local authority, PCT, private and voluntary sectors, and faith groups, this book covers: * the challenges faced by children's centres * how to tackle social issues through the medium of children's centres * achieving effective multi-agency working and true collaboration * the essentials of leading and managing children's centres * the benefits of early intervention * how to effectively deliver health care, education and children's services. Providing a wealth of case studies, this highly topical book will be of interest to nursery and children's centres managers and early years practitioners enrolled on the NPQICL or EYPS programmes, as well as students working towards a degree in Early Childhood Studies or MA in Early Years.

Providing a wide spectrum of views, the authors explore the fine line between normalized physical punishment and illegal or unacceptable physical and emotional abuse of children. It builds on the emerging field of research that provides opportunities for children to speak for themselves about their views and experiences.* Provides observations from children, professionals and several generations from within individual families* Discusses the power of language used by parents, professionals and the media to describe physical punishment* Reflects upon the status of children in societies that sanction their physical punishment, motivations and justifications for its use, perceptions of its effectiveness, and its impact* Presents a combination of personal, social, legal, and language factors which provide significant new insights and suggest ways to move forward

Designed to be a one-stop-shop to meet the needs of local communities, Children's Centres represent a revolutionary shift in the way children's services are delivered to families. Integrated Children's Centres looks at the way in which Children's Centre development has built upon the research and experiences of initiatives such as the HeadStart programme in America and the SureStart programme. Exploring the component elements of truly integrative services and the key players in ensuring positive outcomes: families, the local authority, PCT, private and voluntary sectors, and faith groups, this book covers: * the challenges faced by children's centres * how to tackle social issues through the medium of children's centres * achieving effective multi-agency working and true collaboration * the essentials of leading and managing children's centres * the benefits of early intervention * how to effectively deliver health care, education and children's services. Providing a wealth of case studies, this highly topical book will be of interest to nursery and children's centres managers and early years practitioners enrolled on the NPQICL or EYPS programmes, as well as students working towards a degree in Early Childhood Studies or MA in Early Years.

Successful social policies for children are critical to America's future. Yet the status of children in America suggests that the nation's policies may not be serving them well. Infant and child mortality rates in the U.S. remain high compared to other western industrialized nations; child poverty rates have worsened in the past decade; poor health care, child abuse, and inadequate schooling and child care persist.

This book presents a new set of social policies designed to alleviate these problems and to help satisfy the needs of all children. The policies deal with the seven critical domains affecting children from birth through the passage to adulthood: child care, schooling, transition to work, health care, income security, physical security, and child abuse.

While nearly everyone agrees that children are in trouble, there is considerable debate over what kind of trouble they are in, why this is so, and whether government can or should more actively seek to solve these problems. Americans are evenly divided on the question of whether children's problems are more economic or moral in origin. The seven proposals in this volume both reflect and cut across ideological disagreements. Some call for more government, others call for less, and all call for different government methods for achieving socially agreed upon goals.

Recommendations include: replacing major welfare programs and tax subsidies with a set of universal policies, including national health insurance, child support assurance, and universal child care; offering publicly funded vouchers to allow poor children in inner-city neighborhoods to choose their own schools; using both private and governmental resources to get tough on crime through more stringent criminal justice policies and dramatic social measures; and expanding apprenticeship programs for non-college bound youths.

In addition to the editors, the contributors are Barbara R. Bergmann and Robert I. Lerman, American University; Douglas J. Besharov, American Enterprise Institute; John J. DiIulio, Jr., Princeton University; Julia Graham Lear, George Washington University; and Diane Ravitch, New York University.

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.

A critical and evidence-based review of current and future child protection policy and practice. Provides evidence-based perspective with an up-to-date overview of policy and practice Covers several disciplinary boundaries Goes beyond mere description to enable engagement in critical analysis of various policy areas as they relate to children and families

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.

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.

For the last three decades, parents and professionals have learned to write Social Stories to accurately share information, teach, and praise children, adolescents, and adults with autism. Developed in 1991 by Carol Gray, today Social Stories are an internationally-respected and popular evidence-based instructional strategy. What if the tables were turned? In A Social Story for the Rest of Us, Carol merges her expertise and experience as an autism consultant as she describes with disarming honesty what "the rest of us" need to know to work effectively on behalf of those in our care.

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.

Although most Latin American countries are considered middle-income nations, their child health and well-being statistics overall compare poorly with those of the United States. This volume, representing the fifth part of Project Latin America 2000 from the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, brings together contributors from the U.S., Latin America, and organizations such as UNICEF to consider the physical, educational, social, legal, and economic status and progress of children throughout Latin America, focusing especially on health and rights issues.

In chapters concerning health, experts in biology and medicine address such topics as trends in malnutrition and undernutrition, iron deficiency, inadequate sanitation, and contaminated water. Other articles on children's rights contributors from the social sciences and public policy consider a wide range of issues, including youth violence and homicide, child labor and education, adolescents and the penal system, and future prospects for children's rights. All of the articles contribute to a more complete understanding of the situation of children in contemporary Latin American development, creating a storehouse of information that will be useful to both scholars and policymakers.

These contributors show that as long as children in Latin America remain victimized by poverty, malnutrition, injustice, and violations of human rights, the many challenges of development must be addressed in ways that will protect children as well as support growing economies. they bring into focus the interdependence of all aspects of change, which must be acknowledged if children are to be both rightful beneficiaries and effectiveparticipants in the continuing development of Latin America.

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 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.

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.

What can schools and social care workers do to help children affected by domestic violence?

Large numbers of children are affected by domestic violence. The problem crosses every social class and culture. It causes distress and anxiety in children and adversely affects their learning and play, as well as their behaviour, wellbeing and attendance.

Education staff may know of a child or family in crisis, want to help, yet feel outside their comfort zone, grappling with a complex issue not covered in their training. This book describes the impact of domestic violence on children and provides support for education and social care professionals. It takes heavy workloads into account and suggests practical ways of meeting the needs of pupils who come from difficult home backgrounds.

The authors provide guidance and advice on:

• identifying and responding to signs of distress
• helping pupils to talk about and make sense of their experiences
• the impact on parenting and how parents can be supported
• the needs of young people in refuges and temporary accommodation
• pupil safety and government safeguarding guidelines
• educating young people and the community about domestic violence
• specialist domestic violence services and other agencies that support schools.

Domestic Violence and Children draws on the expertise of a wide range of professionals, including specialist domestic violence children's workers and counsellors, psychologists, teachers, mentors and family support workers. It provides essential help and information to all children's service directorates, as well as a range of professionals in education, social care, health and the voluntary sector.

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 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.

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.

This book provides a "work-in-progress" that seeks to capture the micro (direct service) and macro (managerial) perspectives related to identifying evidence for practice within the practice domain of public child welfare. It is divided into two categories; namely, evidence for direct practice and evidence for management practice. In Part I, the articles are categorized in the areas of child welfare assessment and child welfare outcomes. Expanded versions of the chapters can be accessed at www.bassc.net.

In Part II, the focus is on organizational issues that relate to evidence for management practice. This section includes an overview of evidence-based practice from an organizational perspective along with evidence related to the experiences of others in implementing evidence-based practice.

This book pushes the discussion of evidence-based practice in several new directions regarding: 1) the use of structured reviews to complement the systematic reviews of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaboratives, 2) the process of viewing the call for evidence-based practice as a goal or future vision of practice and evidence for practice provides a more immediate approach to promote evidence-informed practice, and 3) a recognition that evidence-informed practice is part of building agency-based knowledge sharing systems that involve the tacit and explicit knowledge needed to improve the outcomes of social services.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal Of Evidence-Based Social Work.