Helping vulnerable children develop their full potential is an attractive idea with broad common-sense appeal. However, child well-being is a broad concept, and the legislative mandate for addressing well-being in the context of the current child welfare system is not particularly clear. This volume asserts that finding a place for well-being on the list of outcomes established to manage the child welfare system is not as easy as it first appears. The overall thrust of this argument is that policy should be evidence-based, and the available evidence is a primary focus of the book. Because policymakers have to make decisions that allocate resources, a basic understanding of incidence in the public health tradition is important, as is evidence that speaks to the question of what works clinically. The rest of the book addresses the evidence. Chapter 2 integrates bio-ecological and public health perspectives to give the evidence base coherence. Chapters 3 and 4 combine evidence from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, the Multistate Foster Care Data Archive, and the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being to offer an unprecedented profile of children as they enter the child welfare system. Chapters 5 and 6 address the broad question of what works. A concluding chapter focuses on policy and future directions, suggesting that children starting out, children starting school, and children starting adolescence are high-risk populations for which explicit strategies have to be formed. This timely volume offers useful insights into the child welfare system and will be of particular interest to policymakers, academics with an interest in Child Welfare Policy, Social Work educators, and Child Advocates. Fred Wulczyn is a research fellow at Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. Richard P. Barth is the Frank A. Daniels Distinguished Professor, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina. Ying-Ying T. Yuan is senior vice president at Walter R. McDonald & Associates, Inc. Brenda Jones Harden is associate professor at the Institute for Child Study at the University of Maryland. John Landsverk is director of the NIMH-funded Child and Adolescent Services Research Center at Children's Hospital, San Diego.

More than two million child abuse reports are filed annually on behalf of children in the United States. Each of the reported children becomes a concern, at least temporarily, of the professional who files the report, and each family is assessed by additional professionals. A substantial number of children in these families will subsequently enter foster care. Until now, the relationships between the performance of our child welfare system and the growth and outcomes of foster care have not been understood. In an effort to clarify them, Barth and his colleagues have synthesized the results of their longitudinal study in California of the paths taken by children after the initial abuse report: foster care, a return to their homes, or placement for adoption. Because of the outcomes of child welfare services in California have national significance, this is far more than a regional study. It provides a comprehensive picture of children's experiences in the child welfare system and a gauge of the effectiveness of that system. The policy implications of the California study have bearing on major federal and state initiatives to prevent child abuse and reduce unnecessary foster and group home care.

First Published in 2017. In this book the authors move easily and often between the worlds of policy, practice, and research in child and family welfare. Their own research delineates- better than any other to date- the particular factors associated with success>ful and unsuccessful older, special-needs adoptions.

More than two million child abuse reports are filed annually on behalf of children in the United States. Each of the reported children becomes a concern, at least temporarily, of the professional who files the report, and each family is assessed by additional professionals. A substantial number of children in these families will subsequently enter foster care. Until now, the relationships between the performance of our child welfare system and the growth and outcomes of foster care have not been understood. In an effort to clarify them, Barth and his colleagues have synthesized the results of their longitudinal study in California of the paths taken by children after the initial abuse report: foster care, a return to their homes, or placement for adoption. Because of the outcomes of child welfare services in California have national significance, this is far more than a regional study. It provides a comprehensive picture of children's experiences in the child welfare system and a gauge of the effectiveness of that system. The policy implications of the California study have bearing on major federal and state initiatives to prevent child abuse and reduce unnecessary foster and group home care.

Using both historical and contemporary contexts, The Child Welfare Challenge examines major policy practice and research issues as they jointly shape child welfare practice and its future. This text focuses on families and children whose primary recourse to services has been through publicly funded child welfare agencies, and considers historical areas of service-foster care and adoptions, in-home family-centered services, child-protective services, and residential treatment services-where social work has an important role. This fourth edition features new content on child maltreatment and prevention that is informed by key conceptual frameworks informed by brain science, public health, and other research. This edition uses cross-sector data and more sophisticated predictive and other analytical processes to enhance planning and practice design. The authors have streamlined content on child protective services (CPS) to allow for new chapters on juvenile justice/cross-over youth, and international innovations, as well as more content on biology and brain science. The fourth edition includes a glossary of terms as well as instructor and student resource papers available online.

The Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative (GCSWI), which is spearheaded by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), represents a major endeavor for the entire field of social work. GCSWI calls for bold innovation and collective action powered by proven and evolving scientific interventions to address critical social issues facing society. The GCSWI aims to identify and find solutions for some of the most persistent social issues, tackling problems such as homelessness, social isolation, mass incarceration, family violence, and economic inequality. Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society is an edited book that presents the foundations of the GCSWI, laying out the start of the initiative and providing summaries of each of the twelve challenges. The 13 main chapters that form the core of the book, one on each of the Grand Challenges, are written by the primary research teams who are driving each GC project. The second edition includes updates on the initiatives laid out in the first edition and sets new goals for the next five years. It also includes new information on the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism, expanding the social work pipeline, commentaries from leading social work organizations, and how interdisciplinary science can best provide a platform to tackle society's most urgent problems. This fully updated second edition of Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society is important reading for all practicing social workers.

The Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative (GCSWI), which is spearheaded by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), represents a major endeavor for the entire field of social work. GCSWI calls for bold innovation and collective action powered by proven and evolving scientific interventions to address critical social issues facing society. The purpose of GCSWI was modeled after the National Academy of Engineering, which aimed to identify some of the most persistent engineering problems of the day and then put the attentions, energies, and funding of the entire field to work on them for a decade. The GCSWI does the same for social issues, tackling problems such as homelessness, social isolation, mass incarceration, family violence, and economic inequality. Grand Challenges for Social Work and Society is an edited book that will present the foundations of the GCSWI, laying out the start of the initiative and providing summaries of each of the twelve challenges. The 12 main chapters that form the core of the book, one on each of the dozen Grand Challenges, are written by the primary research teams who are driving each GC project.

Using both historical and contemporary contexts, The Child Welfare Challenge examines major policy practice and research issues as they jointly shape child welfare practice and its future. This text focuses on families and children whose primary recourse to services has been through publicly funded child welfare agencies, and considers historical areas of service-foster care and adoptions, in-home family-centered services, child-protective services, and residential treatment services-where social work has an important role. This fourth edition features new content on child maltreatment and prevention that is informed by key conceptual frameworks informed by brain science, public health, and other research. This edition uses cross-sector data and more sophisticated predictive and other analytical processes to enhance planning and practice design. The authors have streamlined content on child protective services (CPS) to allow for new chapters on juvenile justice/cross-over youth, and international innovations, as well as more content on biology and brain science. The fourth edition includes a glossary of terms as well as instructor and student resource papers available online.

Based on a significant body of evidence regarding young children's unique affective, physical, and cognitive development, The Tender Years illuminates the interrelationship of child welfare practice, child development outcomes, and public policy. The authors offer a fundamental framework for decision-making in child welfare and recommend specific changes in policy and practice aimed at moving the system toward greater developmental sensitivity.