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.

Providing excellent insights into evaluation, Preserving Families examines the issues related to describing and evaluating social programs for families and children. The focus is on keeping the family intact, rather than those programs that emphasize removing the child from the family setting. The contributors offer an in-depth discussion of program features that are important for conducting an evaluation, including program description, target populations, client outcomes, cost analysis, and evaluation design. Each chapter raises issues that are pertinent to designing a comprehensive or a special focus study, including a detailed description of program components. Preserving Families is an essential tool for understanding policy analysis and program evaluation, and also provides practical case materials for classroom instruction. "The monograph offers a number of suggestions and illustrations for making evaluations relevant to 'real world' policymakers and program managers. . . . [It] is a great tool that will help demystify evaluation . . . [and] will help people in the family preservation field--and in related fields--feel competent in helping define and shape the evaluation agenda in ways that will produce useful and usable findings. . . . [It] provides great case material for classroom instruction in program evaluation and policy analysis." --Sandy M. O'Donnell, Roosevelt University "Offers a comprehensive assessment of evaluation resources for practitioners and policy makers. It provides a sound overview of the uses of evaluation, as well the construction of study designs, including defining a target population, fitting evealuation to a program environment, appraising outcome measures, and cost analysis. This collection is valuable to any professional working in the field of family-based, home-based or family preservation services." --Family-Based Resource Review "[The editors] have succeeded in providing a volume that will be helpful not only to family service evaluators and administrators but also to family policy instructors and researchers." --Journal of Marriage and the Family "This manual makes an invaluable contribution to the family preservation movement, the centerpiece of child welfare reform. This comprehensive 'how to,' step-by-step guide arrives at a crucial time: [meeting] a growing demand for evaluation for family preservation services. Experts in the child welfare and mental health fields have provided a pertinent and easily understood response to an urgent question: How can a design for an evaluation be produced that will provide reliable data for practitioners, administrators, and policymakers?" --Esther Wattenberg, University of Minnesota "Provides the most current information on crisis-intervention work with high-risk, multiproblem families. . . . For readers interested in program evaluation of family preservation services, the book is a must. . . . Read Preserving Families for thoughtful, practical suggestions relative to evaluating family preservation programs." --Journal of Marital and Family Therapy "The importance of accurate and available evaluation to social policy formulation is a critical issue that is often ignored because this type of research is generally lacking. Special research techniques and methods need to be considered in order to answer policy questions. This book is an important contribution to that end. The methods and techniques described by these authors are certainly applicable to other social service policy areas as well. Clearly written, this is a volume for hands-on planners and evaluators; it is not intimidating, nor is it condescending." --Family Relations

Providing excellent insights into evaluation, Preserving Families examines the issues related to describing and evaluating social programs for families and children. The focus is on keeping the family intact, rather than those programs that emphasize removing the child from the family setting. The contributors offer an in-depth discussion of program features that are important for conducting an evaluation, including program description, target populations, client outcomes, cost analysis, and evaluation design. Each chapter raises issues that are pertinent to designing a comprehensive or a special focus study, including a detailed description of program components. Preserving Families is an essential tool for understanding policy analysis and program evaluation, and also provides practical case materials for classroom instruction. "The monograph offers a number of suggestions and illustrations for making evaluations relevant to 'real world' policymakers and program managers. . . . [It] is a great tool that will help demystify evaluation . . . [and] will help people in the family preservation field--and in related fields--feel competent in helping define and shape the evaluation agenda in ways that will produce useful and usable findings. . . . [It] provides great case material for classroom instruction in program evaluation and policy analysis." --Sandy M. O'Donnell, Roosevelt University "Offers a comprehensive assessment of evaluation resources for practitioners and policy makers. It provides a sound overview of the uses of evaluation, as well the construction of study designs, including defining a target population, fitting evealuation to a program environment, appraising outcome measures, and cost analysis. This collection is valuable to any professional working in the field of family-based, home-based or family preservation services." --Family-Based Resource Review "[The editors] have succeeded in providing a volume that will be helpful not only to family service evaluators and administrators but also to family policy instructors and researchers." --Journal of Marriage and the Family "This manual makes an invaluable contribution to the family preservation movement, the centerpiece of child welfare reform. This comprehensive 'how to,' step-by-step guide arrives at a crucial time: [meeting] a growing demand for evaluation for family preservation services. Experts in the child welfare and mental health fields have provided a pertinent and easily understood response to an urgent question: How can a design for an evaluation be produced that will provide reliable data for practitioners, administrators, and policymakers?" --Esther Wattenberg, University of Minnesota "Provides the most current information on crisis-intervention work with high-risk, multiproblem families. . . . For readers interested in program evaluation of family preservation services, the book is a must. . . . Read Preserving Families for thoughtful, practical suggestions relative to evaluating family preservation programs." --Journal of Marital and Family Therapy "The importance of accurate and available evaluation to social policy formulation is a critical issue that is often ignored because this type of research is generally lacking. Special research techniques and methods need to be considered in order to answer policy questions. This book is an important contribution to that end. The methods and techniques described by these authors are certainly applicable to other social service policy areas as well. Clearly written, this is a volume for hands-on planners and evaluators; it is not intimidating, nor is it condescending." --Family Relations