Child Law starts with the question "Who is the Child?" In direct contrast to the CRC, which calls for putting the interests of the child first in all policies dealing with children, it appears that the interests of others are the major consideration de facto. In law, children's right to protection is severely limited by the presence of a maximum age limit, with no consideration of the starting point: current and ongoing scientific research has demonstrated the effects of this non-consideration in a number of abnormalities and diseases, not only in children, but in adults and the elderly. The WHO has published a number of studies to that effect and the 2012 Report on Endocrine Disruptors more than confirms this claim. This and other scientific insights that have largely been ignored show the flaws and inadequacies of the legal regimes intended to protect children, in a number of areas, from the basic public health to the right to normal development; child labor law conventions; in conflict situations; as a result of climate and other events; children as illegal migrants and as inmates in prison camps.

This invaluable reference introduces successful strengths-based programs for aiding families of young children in critical social contexts: family, school, community, and policy. The wide range of systems/contextual approaches described here are based in current understanding of children's development, stress and resilience in families, cultural competence, and the two-generational approach to intervention. Research-based examples across early care and early learning platforms illustrate the links between parental protective factors and children's academic and social outcomes, and between family stability and larger social goals. By supporting parents and children equally, the contributors assert, these interventions more fully address developmental and family issues than programs that mainly serve one generation or the other. Included in the coverage:* Parent and community focused approaches to supporting parents of young children: the Family Networks Project.* Honoring parenting values, expectations, and approaches across cultures.* Building young children's executive functions at home and in early care and education settings.* Promoting early childhood development in the pediatric medical home.* Neighborhood approaches to supporting families of young children.* Public policy strategies to promote the well-being of families with young children. Innovative Approaches for Supporting Parents of Young Children benefits professionals and practitioners working to support families of young children, particularly those interested in social work, psychology, public policy, and public health.

Bringing together theories, ideas, insights and experiences of practitioners and researchers from Brazil, India, South Africa and the UK, this book explores children and young people's involvement in public action. The contributors consider the potential of children and young people's participation to be transformative.

In 2012, over 200 academics who are active in international childhood and youth research gathered together alongside young people for a unique ICYRNet conference where they debated and discussed participatory approaches. Participation, Citizenship and Intergenerational Relations in Children and Young People's Lives continues the dialogue between young people and adults that started then. This edited collection draws together work from six countries about participatory research and intergenerational relations. Adopting participatory techniques, the editors worked with children and young people to co-author three chapters that each reflect young people's interpretations of three chapters written by adults. This provides a unique insight into how children and young people view research which is about them as well as highlighting their perspectives on research which resonates with their own life experiences. The book includes reference to a wealth of supplementary visual and audio materials which are available on the conference website at www.dvigc.com.

This collection provides a comprehensive insight into disabled children and youth in Nordic countries. It seeks to understand the experiences of children from their own perspectives and takes a multidisciplinary approach grounded in the new social studies of childhood and the Nordic relational approach to disability.

Exploring a wide variety of case studies and developmental issues from a capability perspective, this book is an original contribution to both development and children's studies that raises a strong case for placing children's issues at the core of human development.

Children today are growing up in a world of global media, in which the voices of many cultures compete for attention. Increasing numbers of children are also citizens of the globe: they live in multicultural societies, many have migrated themselves and live within active diasporic and transnational networks. The authors offer a fresh perspective on the relationships between media, globalisation and contemporary childhood.

This provocative book takes a look at children's consumption of sexualized media messages while providing parents, teachers, and professionals with strategies for abating their influence. In this eye-opening book, experienced child psychologist Jennifer W. Shewmaker contends that the manner in which a child is raised influences how they respond to media messages, particularly those shaded by sexual overtones. This text takes a hard look at the impact of advertisements, products, and entertainment on a child's psyche and offers strategies for helping kids become critical, active media consumers. Drawing from research in a wide variety of disciplines, this book explores the interpersonal factors within children's lives that impact how they learn to process sexualized media messages. The book argues that an increase in marketing to children along with media-based fabrications of beauty, masculinity, and femininity impact the confidence and character of young children who are often greatly affected by what they see and hear. The author shares invaluable tips for promoting strengths in children and adolescents of both genders and presents the protective influence of communities to help children dismiss distorted media images. Provides a quick overview of previous works in child development, communication, and education Discusses four mediating variables influencing children's values: culture of celebrity, family factors, gender, and community systems Includes an "In Their Voices" section featuring specific responses from children, adolescents, parents, and professionals Covers television, movies, music, and other media Demonstrates the impact of both positive and negative media messages

"Although two decades have passed since the nearly universal ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the realization of children's rights throughout much of the developing world continues to be a significant challenge. This collection of "essays from the field" combines accounts of the experiences and perspectives of marginalized children in ten developing countries with critical assessments of current child rights policies and strategies of intervention. In considering children living in arduous circumstances such as violent conflict, exploitative labor, incarceration, and institutional care, the collection also highlights the possibilities of enhancing the fundamental resiliency of children"--

This is one of a series of handbooks designed to help lay people play a greater part in the life of the Church. In many parishes it Is usual to find men and women reading at Mass, administering Communion, organizing the children's liturgy, even leading services in the absence of a priest, For all these tasks and other roles that the laity now plays, the Serving the Church series offers not only practical advice, but in-depth teaching that aims to create a deeper, more spiritual understanding of the Catholic faith. A Handbook for Children's Liturgy offers a complete guide on how to make the ministry of the Word meaningful, memorable and enjoyable for children of all ages. Whether there are a large number of children in your parish or only a very few, its down-to-earth advice and ready-to-go ideas are applicable whatever the local circumstances. Help Is given on all practical aspects of this vital ministry: what kind of person makes a good minister of the Word, how to build a team to work with children, how to plan a children's liturgy, ideas for Masses where children remain present throughout. Sample liturgies complete with photocopiable artwork are also included. The nurture of children in the Christian faith is one of the greatest responsibilities and for all.

The problems of young black males are challenging, complex, and chronic, perplexing educators, social scientists, and policymakers. While other groups, including women and recent immigrants, have made economic and social gains in the last two decades, black youth are now more likely than they were in 1960 to be unemployed, to be involved in the criminal justice system, to be unwed fathers, and to commit suicide. Young black males are a population at risk in an escalating cycle of deviance, dysfunction, and despair.

This comprehensive volume provides in-depth analyses of the deteriorating status of black youth, particularly black males. Experts from a variety of professions examine the implications and interrelationships of the multiple problems facing black youth and propose a comprehensive set of policies and programs that address those problems. They consider such important economic, sociocultural, and political issues as unemployment, teenage pregnancy, crime and delinquency substance abuse, and the conservative backlash against civil rights and social welfare programs.

Whether you are a seasonal volunteer, group leader or full-time professional, you need practical advice on how to provide young people with the tools they need to succeed.

Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals-E-QYP for short-provides best practices to help young people ages six to eighteen reach their potential. It also offers age-appropriate ideas that you can translate to your specific child and youth program.

E-QYP is a handy reference for individuals, as well as a powerful volunteer and staff development tool when adopted by organizations. It also serves as a great supplement to college textbooks on child and youth development. With easy-to-read information and sample activities that really work, this guide can help you help the young people in your life.

"Youth agencies serve huge numbers of kids in the United States, but few youth workers have specific knowledge about youth development, and agency budgets tend to have few dollars for staff training. Although the training and credentialing of all youth workers remains an aspiration, workers with and without training need ready access to research-based knowledge and practices. Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals provides both. Whether read as a whole or accessed for just-in-time information, Equipping Quality Youth Development Professionals is a timely, valuable, and much-needed resource."

-Irv Katz, president and CEO, National Human Services Assembly and National Collaboration for Youth

This volume examines children's and young people's emotions in policy-making and professional practice. It seeks both to inform readers about up-to-date research and to provoke debate, encouraging and enabling critical reflections upon emotions in policy and practice, relevant to readers' own context.

"In recent years children have become an increasingly important consumer market, and there is growing concern about the commercialisation of childhood. This book sheds light on these debates, offering new empirical data and challenging critical perspectives on childrens engagement with consumer culture from a wide range of international settings"--

In its various manifestations, the campaign to end child soldiering has brought graphic images of militarized children to popular consciousness. In the main, this has been a campaign that has seemed to speak to African contexts without as much reflection on the myriad ways in which the lives of children are militarized in advanced (post)industrial societies. Proceeding from this quite striking omission, the contributors to this volume move beyond the usual focus on the global South. Making what will be an important contribution to a much needed critical turn in the vast and still rapidly growing child soldier literature, they address multifarious ways in which childhood is militarized beyond the global South through enactments of militarism that have drawn much less in the way of critical inquiry.

In this collection, the contributors look at the current spread of universalizing discourses concerning young children across the globe, examining the way these discourses, which purport to describe everyone in a scientific and neutral way, actually create mechanisms through which children are divided and excluded. The contributors to this book employ post-structuralist, postcolonial, and feminist theoretical frameworks.

Normally, our relationships with our brothers and sisters are the longest relationships in our lives, outlasting time with our parents, and most marriages today. The sibling relationship is emotionally powerful and critically important, giving us a sense of continuity throughout life. So what happens when a child loses contact not only with his or her parents, but with siblings too? That is what happens in thousands of cases each year inside the child welfare system. Children are surrendered by parents - or taken by the government - and placed in the foster care system. There, they are often separated and sent to different foster families, or adopted by different couples. In this work, a team of top experts details for us how this added separation futher traumatizes children. This stellar team of internationally known researchers - some of whom are themselves adoptees - shares with us hard, poignant, and personal insights, as well as ways we might act to solve this widespread problem.

Contributors address not only the importance of nurturing sibling bonds and mental health strategies to support those relationships, but also the legal rights of siblings to be together, as well as issues in international adoptions. Emerging and standing programs to encourage and facilitate adoptions that keep siblings together are featured, as are programs that at least enable them to stay in contact.

This collection provides a guide to the legal requirements surrounding children's rights. The book discusses the practicalities and problems of listening to the child in educational, social and health settings.

This handbook describes evidence-based methods of assessing psychological, educational, behavioral, and developmental problems in children and adolescents. It provides state-of-the-art analyses of leading assessment tools and methods. Chapters provide an overview of childhood assessment issues, diagnostic classification systems, interviewing and report writing, traditional assessment tools and methods, such as Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). In addition, chapters address daily living, academic, and social skills, commonly encountered psychological conditions, and developmental disorders, reviewing definitions and etiology, history of assessment and diagnosis, possible comorbid conditions, and current measures and procedures. The handbook also covers specific childhood disorders that often present assessment challenges in children, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, mood disorders, pain, and feeding and eating disorders. Topics featured in this handbook include: Adaptive and developmental behavior scales. Diagnostic classification systems and how to apply them to childhood problems and disorders. Intelligence testing and its use in childhood psychological assessment. Assessment of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in persons with developmental disabilities. Self-Injurious behavior in children. Prevalence and assessment of common sleep problems in children. The Handbook of Childhood Psychopathology and Developmental Disabilities Assessment is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and related therapists and professionals in clinical child and school psychology, pediatrics, social work, developmental psychology, behavioral therapy/rehabilitation, child and adolescent psychiatry, and special education.

The first fully comparative empirical analysis of the relationship between education and social cohesion, this book develops a new "distributional theory" of the effects of educational inequality on social solidarity. Based on a wide-ranging theoretical critique, and extensive analysis of data on inequality and social attitudes for over 25 developed countries, the study shows how educational inequality undermines social trust, civic co-operation and the rule of law. It is not how much education a country has that matters for social cohesion but how it is distributed and the co-operative values that people learn.

This text provides insights into the field of international human rights politics - the protection of children and their rights - by looking at the negotiations leading to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

This book investigates how constructed representations of the child have and continue to restrict children's opportunities to engage in moral discourses, and the implications this has on children's everyday experiences. By considering a moral dimension to both structure and agency, the author focuses on the nature of the images that are used to represent the child and how these sit in contrast to the active and meaning-driven way in which children negotiate their everyday lives. The book therefore argues that 'morality' provides a filter to understand the backdrop for interaction, as well as offering a focus for engaging with the individual as a social agent, acting and reacting in the world around them. Negotiating Childhoods will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, childhood studies, criminology, social work, culture and media studies and philosophy.

aChildren and Youth in a New Nation is a rich and welcomed introduction to the many faces of childhood in America from the Revolution to the eve of the Civil War. The history of childhood is often treated as a marginal topic, disconnected from major historical themes. This volume seeks to correct that misperception by demonstrating that the growth of the republic and the emergence of new ideas about childhood and the shifting experience of actual children were inextricably linked.a
--Steven Mintz, Columbia University, and author of "Huckas Raft: A History of American Childhood"

In the early years of the Republic, as Americans tried to determine what it meant to be an American, they also wondered what it meant to be an American child. A defensive, even fearful, approach to childhood gave way to a more optimistic campaign to integrate young Americans into the Republican experiment.

In Children and Youth in a New Nation, historians unearth the experiences of and attitudes about children and youth during the decades following the American Revolution. Beginning with the revolution itself, the contributors explore a broad range of topics, from the ways in which American children and youth participated in and learned from the revolt and its aftermaths, to developing notions of aideala childhoods as they were imagined by new religious denominations and competing ethnic groups, to the struggle by educators over how the society that came out of the Revolution could best be served by its educational systems. The volume concludes by foreshadowing future achild-savinga efforts by reformers committed to constructing adequate systems of public health and child welfare institutions.

Rootedin the historical literature and primary sources, Children and Youth in a New Nation is a key resource in our understanding of origins of modern ideas about children and youth and the conflation of national purpose and ideas related to child development.

Comparing the educational experiences of adolescents from a variety of 'visible' ethnic minority groups across Europe, and focusing on underprivileged urban contexts, this book reveals the structural inequalities, as well as the often conflicting inter-ethnic relations which develop in classrooms, playgrounds and larger communities.