Bamba and Haight provide an in-depth understanding of the everyday experiences and perspectives of maltreated children and their substitute caregivers and teachers in Japan. Their innovative research program combines strategies from developmental psychology, ethnography and action research. Although child advocates from around the world share certain goals and challenges, there is substantial cultural variation in how child maltreatment is understood, its origins, impact on children and families, as well as societal responses deemed appropriate. The authors step outside of the Western cultural context to illustrate creative ecologically and developmentally based strategies for supporting the psychosocial well-being of maltreated children in state care, provide an alternative but complementary model to the prevalent large-scale survey strategies for conducting international research in child welfare, and provide a resource for educators to enhance the international content of human development, education, social work and child welfare courses.

Deliver a detailed and focused Child Development course with the 7th edition of this textbook from Pamela Minett, designed to cover all the relevant topics in concise and highly illustrated chapters. - Quickly access individual topic areas with concise, focused and clearly laid out chapters. - Build knowledge and understanding with ongoing summative questions at the end of each chapter. - Engage learners with 100s of illustrations and photographs to support understanding of key concepts. - Suitable for all Level 1 and Level 2 specifications.

The Kindness of Strangers takes a hard, realistic look at mentoring while offering a vivid portrayal of the mentoring movement and how ordinary citizens in cities across America are trying to turn young lives around.

Child abuse, incest, child molestation, Halloween sadism, child pornography: although clearly not new problems, they have attracted more attention than ever before. "Threatened Children "asks why. Joel Best analyzes the rhetorical tools used by child advocates when making claims aimed at raising public anxiety and examines the media's role in transmitting reformers' claims and the public's response to the frightening statistics, compelling examples, and expanding definitions it confronts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from criminal justice records to news stories, from urban legends to public opinion surveys, Best reveals how the cultural construction of social problems evolves.

According to the annual UNICEF report "The State of the World's Children", progress has been achieved in the fight against poverty, but the inequalities in children's conditions still exist. With the data, those most at risk are identified, i.e. children who are least visible in the spotlight of public attention and suffer most from social isolation in the community. In order to develop every society should identify those who are most in need and should look for ways to support them. Both physical and emotional development of children living in socially disadvantaged areas should be supported and their access to basic needs should be facilitated. This book presents the results of a project aiming at mapping child poverty in the Mamak district of Ankara. Taking the local conditions into consideration, an action plan has been developed to characterize the poverty experienced by the children living in the Mamak district and to generate solutions.

How can we end the inter-generational cycle of poverty and dysfunction in the US's urban ghettos? This ground-breaking and controversial book is the first to provide a child-centered perspective on the subject by combining a wealth of social science information with sophisticated normative analysis to support novel reforms-to child protection law and practice, family law, and zoning- that would quickly end that cycle. The rub is that the reforms needed would entail further suffering and loss of liberty for adults in these communities, and liberal advocacy organizations and academics are so adult-centered in their sympathies and thinking that they reflexively oppose any such measures. Liberals have instead promoted one ineffectual parent-focused program after another, in an ideologically-driven quest for the magic pill that can save both adults and children in these communities at the same time. This `insider critique' of liberal child welfare policy reveals a dilemma that liberals have yet to face squarely: there is an ineradicable conflict of interests between many young children and their parents, especially in areas of concentrated poverty, and one must choose sides. It is a must read for legal academics, political scientists, urban policy experts, as well as professionals working in social work, law, education, urban planning, legislative offices, and administrative agencies.

In eighteenth-century London, abandoned children were one of the social groups most affected by the harsh living conditions. Several charitable initiatives had endeavoured to alleviate the problem, not least the Foundling Hospital, of which Jonas Hanway (c.1712 86) was a governor. His tireless philanthropy and campaigning resulted in the 1762 Registers Bill, which required parishes to keep records of the poor children they looked after. In this tract, first published in 1766, Hanway uses information collected from these registers to demonstrate the appalling mortality rates of orphans in care in London, calling for radical reform. This work was instrumental in the passage of the 1767 act that resulted in a dramatic fall in the number of infant deaths over the following decade. It is a powerful expose of the failures of the capital's care system, as well as a testament to the influence of philanthropic activism.

In Cleveland in 1987 a medical diagnosis of child sexual abuse was made in 127 children, resulting in their removal from home. The consequent intense scrutiny and public criticism around the case, together with the subsequent Butler-Sloss inquiry, resulted in the medical evidence being discredited, giving rise to a system which relies on children to speak out about their abuse. This book argues that this 1987 crisis continues to shape child protection today, resulting in opportunities to protect children being missed. Now re-issued with a substantial new introduction and concluding reflections, this book provides the only account by key professionals directly involved in the Cleveland cases, allowing readers to understand what really took place in Cleveland and why it continues to matter today. It analyses the many failures to address the plight of sexually abused children and makes constructive suggestions for the way forward to provide more effective interventions for children at risk.

to establish impact, attributing observed changes in welfare to the intervention, while identifying key factors of success. Impact evaluations are aimed at providing feedback to help improve the design of programs and policies. They also provide greater accountability and a tool for dynamic learning, allowing policymakers to improve ongoing programs and ultimately better allocate funds across programs. Such a causal analysis is essential for understanding the relative role of alternative interventions in reducing poverty. The papers in this section again adopt a variety of techniques. The rst two impact evaluation studies employ propensity score matching to establish, ex-post, a valid control group to assess the impact on child schooling outcomes among b- e ciaries of various interventions in Kenya and Ethiopia. The third chapter c- ries out an ex-ante evaluation of alternative cash transfer programs on child school attendance in Uruguay. The nal paper further carries out in-depth macro-modeling and micro-regression analysis to simulate the impacts of the food crisis and various policy responses, including food subsidies and cash transfers, on various dimensions of child poverty in Mali. Though using different approaches, the studies are gen- ally in agreement concerning the positive impact of the cash transfer program on child schooling and labor market outcomes. The studies from Kenya and Uruguay both nd that the schooling interventions are progressive.

Two leading experts provide an authoritative and reassuring guide to the issues and concerns of adoptive and birth families through all stages of the open adoption relationship.

This volume describes how children's experience with violence may affect and endanger their education, as well as their physical safety and their general well-being. It includes all forms of physical , psychological and sexual abuse, and neglect against children at home, at school, and in public spaces in two different areas of Kenya (rural and urban), while taking into account its environmental and cultural factors. This volume is unique, not only because of its focus on a less researched yet highly acute social problem but also because it provides inside knowledge by giving the children a voice through their direct participation in the data collection.

After years of research and reflection on the work of the interdisciplinary family justice system Mervyn Murch offers a fresh approach to supporting the thousands of children every year who experience a complex form of bereavement following parental separation and divorce. This stressful family change, combined with the loss of support due to austerity cuts, can damage their education, well-being, mental health and long-term life chances. Murch argues for early preventative intervention which responds to children's worries when they first present them, without waiting until things have gone badly wrong. His radical proposals for reform involve a much more coordinated and joined up approach by schools, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. This book encourages practitioners and academics to look outside their professional silos and to see the world through the eyes of children in crisis to enable services to offer direct support in a manner and at a time when it is most needed.

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.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the legal regulation of the provision of healthcare to young children in England and Wales. A critical analysis is given on the law governing the provision of healthcare to young and dependent children identifying an understanding of the child as vulnerable and in need of protection, including from his or her own parents. The argument is made for a conceptual framework of relational responsibilities which would ensure that consideration is given to the needs of the child as an individual, to the experiences of parents gained as they care for their child and that the wider context, such as attitudes towards disability, public health issues or the support and resources available, is examined. This book makes an important contribution to understanding the law regulating the provision of healthcare to young and dependent children and to the development of a discourse of responsibility.

In this absorbing story of how child abuse grew from a small, private-sector charity concern into a multimillion-dollar social welfare issue, Barbara Nelson provides important new perspectives on the process of public agenda setting. Using extensive personal interviews and detailed archival research, she reconstructs an invaluable history of child abuse policy in America. She shows how the mass media presented child abuse to the public, how government agencies acted and interacted, and how state and national legislatures were spurred to strong action on this issue. Nelson examines prevailing theories about agenda setting and introduces a new conceptual framework for understanding how a social issue becomes part of the public agenda. This issue of child abuse, she argues, clearly reveals the scope and limitations of social change initiated through interest-group politics. Unfortunately, the process that transforms an issue into a popular cause, Nelson concludes, brings about programs that ultimately address only the symptoms and not the roots of such social problems.

A widespread conviction in the need to rescue China's children took hold in the early twentieth century. Amid political upheaval and natural disasters, neglected or abandoned children became a humanitarian focal point for Sino-Western cooperation and intervention in family life. Chinese academics and officials sought new scientific measures, educational institutions, and social reforms to improve children's welfare. Successive regimes encouraged teachers to shape children into Qing subjects, Nationalist citizens, or Communist comrades. In Raising China's Revolutionaries, Margaret Mih Tillman offers a novel perspective on the political and scientific dimensions of experiments with early childhood education from the early Republican period through the first decade of the People's Republic. She traces transnational advocacy for child welfare and education, examining Christian missionaries, philanthropists, and the role of international relief during World War II. Tillman provides in-depth analysis of similarities and differences between Nationalist and Communist policy and cultural notions of childhood. While both Nationalist and Communist regimes drew on preschool institutions to mobilize the workforce and shape children's political subjectivity, the Communist regime rejected the Nationalists' commitment to the modern, bourgeois family. With new insights into the roles of experts, the cultural politics of fundraising, and child welfare as a form of international exchange, Raising China's Revolutionaries is an important work of institutional and transnational history that illuminates the evolution of modern concepts of childhood in China.

There is a silent epidemic of childhood sexual abuse in the United States and a legal system that is not effectively protecting children from predators. Recent coverage of widespread abuse in the public schools and in churches has brought the once-taboo subject of childhood sexual abuse to the forefront. The problem extends well beyond schools and churches, though: the vast majority of survivors are sexually abused by family or family acquaintances with 90 percent of abuse never reported to the authorities. Marci A. Hamilton proposes a comprehensive yet simple solution: eliminate the arbitrary statutes of limitations for childhood sexual abuse so that survivors past and present can get into court. In Justice Denied, Hamilton predicts a coming civil rights movement for children and explains why it is in the interest of all Americans to allow victims of childhood sexual abuse this chance to seek justice when they are ready.

This book explains the unique insights that child observation can bring to practice with children and families and helps the reader develop their own skills in this approach. The ability to observe and to process what is seen is crucial in social work with children and families. Yet successive inquiries into child deaths have demonstrated the problems faced by professionals in doing what is superficially a very straightforward task, highlighting the difficulties in seeing, thinking about and developing an understanding of the child's experience. This book helps readers to develop an understanding of what is entailed in observation, explaining the unique insights that child observation can bring to practice with children and families. By drawing out relevant theoretical concepts it aids their understanding of what they are observing and so helps them to develop their own skills. Key theoretical concepts are brought together from developmental psychology and psychoanalytic thinking in a way that enables practitioners to draw on these to inform and enrich their thinking. Useful case studies are presented which practitioners can relate to their own practice when they are struggling to make sense of difficult situations.

Raymond is a talented young artist who carries his work from homeless shelter to homeless shelter in a tattered bag but has never even been inside a museum. He is emblematic of the children that the renowned pediatrician and children's advocate Irwin Redlener has met over the course of his long and colorful career. Inadequate education, barriers to health care, and crushing poverty make it overwhelmingly difficult for many children to realize their dreams. In this memoir, Redlener draws on poignant personal experiences to investigate the failures of our educational and health systems-and how we must drastically change our approach to the needs of children if the next generation of Americans is to fulfill its potential. Redlener's winding career-from his work as a pediatrician in the Arkansas delta, to treating child abuse in a Miami hospital, to helping children in the aftermath of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, to cofounding the Children's Health Fund with the musician Paul Simon-is his springboard for discussing larger policy issues that hinder us from effectively eradicating childhood poverty or overcoming barriers to accessible health care. As a young doctor, Redlener encountered firsthand the surprising trials of extreme poverty and the resilient kids and parents who struggle to overcome it. In the back of his mobile health clinic, Redlener meets children who are largely invisible to the system-homeless, in extended foster care, or rarely able to see a doctor-yet who nonetheless dream of becoming paleontologists, artists, and marine biologists. The problems these children face go far beyond barriers to health care. Persistent deprivation and the avoidable problems that accompany poverty ensnare millions of children, with rippling effects that harm the health, prosperity, and creativity of the adults they become. Redlener's recommendations for policy makers and concerned citizens show a way forward if we can come together to advocate for children.

This accessibly written textbook explores how our increasing knowledge of neuroscience and advances in methods of investigation is changing our understanding of child development. Packed full of images, case studies, reflection points, further reading suggestions and a full glossary of technical terms, it examines key aspects of development such as emotion, memory, learning, perception and language, as well as neurodevelopmental disorders. It is designed to introduce undergraduate students on social science courses to the science behind the brain, looking at how it is structured and how it develops from a tiny cluster of cells into a complex dynamic structure that controls every aspect of our very existence.

The second edition of Children s Testimony is a fully up-to-date resource for practitioners and researchers working in forensic contexts and concerned with children's ability to provide reliable testimony about abuse. * Written for both practitioners and researchers working in forensic contexts, including investigative interviewers, police officers, lawyers, judges, expert witnesses, and social workers * Explores a range of issues involved with children's testimony and their ability to provide reliable testimony about experienced or witnessed events, including abuse * Avoids jargon and highly technical language * Includes a comprehensive range of contributions from an international group of practitioners and researchers to ensure topicality and relevance

This book examines after-school programs in light of their explosive growth in recent years. In the rush to mount programs, there is a danger of promoting weak ones of little value and failing to implement strong ones adequately. But what is quality and how can it be achieved? This book presents findings from an intensive study of three after-school centers that differed dramatically in quality. Drawing from 233 site visits, the authors examine how - and why - young people thrive in good programs and suffer in weak ones. The book features engaging, in-depth case studies of each of the three centers and of six youths, two from each center. Written in a highly accessible style for academics, youth workers, after-school program leaders and policy makers, the study breaks new ground in highlighting the importance of factors such as collective mentoring, synergies among different programs and activities, and organizational culture and practices.

The rate of young unwed couples and teens having children is increasing, and many of these couples choose to "co-parent" children, rather than to marry and remain in a relationship. Young parents are at risk for engaging in dysfunctional parenting practices and intimate partner violence, and face additional challenges on top of their own developmental struggles. Social workers and other mental health services providers can play a role in this process by supporting the interpersonal development of young couples who are at-risk for intimate partner violence, child abuse/neglect, and paternal disengagement. Unfortunately, many professionals lack formalized training in this area and there are few programs available to give the necessary support. The Young Parenthood Program (YPP) was designed and launched in order to meet this need. YPP is a brief program (12-14 sessions), initiated prior to childbirth when both parents are more willing and able to participate in co-parent counseling. The program is intended to teach the young couple a basic set of interpersonal communication and problem solving skills to provide a foundation for a co-parenting model for raising their child. Clinical trials have indicated that couples who participated in YPP demonstrated better relationship skills, lower rates of intimate partner violence (IPV), less paternal disengagement, and more positive parenting behavior among young fathers. The importance and challenges of working with young fathers who are reluctant to engage and participate is emphasized throughout this proposed guide. The guide is designed to help social workers and practitioners by offering a solution-oriented approach to the challenges of co-parenting among adolescents and young adults. This practitioner's guide would expand the training materials that Florscheim and his colleagues have developed. In addition to the manual itself, the authors are developing a CEU module, to be hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, to try to reach into practitioner markets and encourage the use of the program.

Disorganized attachment, the most extreme form of insecure attachment, can develop in a child when the person who is meant to protect them becomes a source of danger. Someone with disorganized attachment experiences 'fear without a solution', and it can result in extreme, erratic and disturbing behaviour. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible text on disorganized attachment. It outlines what it is, how it can be identified, the key causes, how it manifests in adulthood, and the implications for caregivers and those within close relationships. It also covers the debate over whether disorganized attachment can repeat down generations within families, and discusses neurological explanations and appropriate interventions. The book focuses on both children and adults and includes case vignettes to root the theory in practice and to illustrate real-life examples of disorganized attachment. With an authoritative research base, this accessible text will be invaluable to undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of social care, psychology, counselling and allied health professions, as well as practitioners and academics in these fields.

Reunification is a primary goal of foster care systems and the most common permanency planning decision. It is defined as the return of children placed in protective care to the home of their birth family and used to describe the act of restoring a child in out-of-home care back to the biological family. Yet reunification decision-making and the process of reintegrating children into birth families remains under researched. This Brief takes a look at family reunification knowledge and research in Australia where there is evidence that most children placed in protective care are eventually reunited with their birth parents. It explores how a knowledge of reunification decision making and outcomes can contribute to strengthening practice and informing policy formulation and program planning in Child Welfare.