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This Handbook provides an accessible resource for all social work students, educators, practitioners, and policymakers to increase their knowledge and understanding of how research into the diversity and impact of child and family social work interventions might underpin and drive policy and practice.Divided into six sections The Context of Child and Family Social Work Research Preventive and Reparative Responses to Children and Families Child Maltreatment: Causes, Consequences, and Responses Alternate Care as an Approach to Safeguarding Children and Young People Intervention: Therapeutic Responses to Vulnerable Children, Youth, and Families Child and Family Social Work in the Global Context and comprising 52 newly written chapters by experts in the field, it provides a foundational overview of the field of child and family social work, including defining concepts, sentinel historical milestones, and the scope of practice. It also identifies developments in auxiliary fields such as neuroscience, psychology, education, health, poverty, and mediaBy illustrating diverse research endeavours in parenting, maltreatment, prevention, child protection, and substitutive interventions including foster care, residential care, adoption, and juvenile corrections and elaborating child welfare research methods, measures, and impacts on practice, it analyses evidence-based interventions and policies in early intervention, child protection, child placement, adoption, and advocacy. It will be required reading for anyone working in social work and child protection.

Is residential care'inherently harmful'? This book argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong and is, itself, harmful to a significant number of children and youth. The presumptive view is based largely on overgeneralizations from research with infants and very young children raised in extremely deprived environments. A careful analysis of the available research supports the use of high-quality residential care as a treatment of choice with certain groups of needy children and youth, not a last resort intervention. The nature of high-quality care is explored through child development theory and research and two empirically supported models of care are described in detail. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of child development, child welfare, youth work, social work and education as well as professionals working within these fields.

This introduction to social work with children and young people who are looked after (in care or accommodated) by statutory or voluntary agencies is the only textbook on the subject which addresses this area of work across all four nations of the UK.Providing a clear theoretical and ethical basis, it introduces and develops a set of core themes, reflective of contemporary developments including: • the influence of, and tensions between, dominant discourses that shape the social work service (relationship-based practice, early intervention and prevention, social innovation, evidence-based practice and outcomes); • the use and abuse of concepts of ‘children's needs'and ‘best interests'; • ideas of parenting and parental responsibility, and the relationships between children, families, communities and the state; • the importance of recognising that children and young people have rights and considering their views; • trauma, trauma-informed practice, transitions and resilience.With chapters addressing a sequence of topics – assessment and planning, residential and foster care, leaving care, and permanence – there is a specific focus on working with disabled children, children from minority ethnic communities, and marginalised groups of children and young people, including refugees and asylum seekers, LGBTQIA+ children and those who have been trafficked.Packed full of useful pedagogical features, including material on the legal and policy context, summaries of research evidence, notes for good practice, group teaching exercises, references to legislation and guidance, and guides to further reading, it will be core reading on any child and family care modules, general preparation for practice courses, Frontline, Step Up, as well as for all social work practitioners.

This book provides social work students at both undergraduate and graduate level with compelling child welfare case examples, intervention plans, and tips for building working alliances with clients. The 50 such case examples, categorized by maltreatment type(s) and by underlying problem(s), each present an intertwined network of issues characterizing the members of a family and their interactions—as in actual field situations. Thus, social work students learning therapy or case management will find a wide variety of scenarios from child welfare services and children/family outpatient care and will learn about the range of challenges clients can face. Using the instruction/practice sheets that illustrate sound approaches for joining with clients to tailor their own interventions, students are provided with the tools to work out the application of assessment and intervention strategies with regard to the particular circumstances of each example. Throughout, the emphasis is on growing the working alliance between social worker and client, reflecting the strength perspective emphasized in social work practice.

Revitalizing Residential Care for Children and Youth: Cross-National Trends and Challenges addresses the question of how societies with developed welfare and social service systems assess current needs and future directions in their residential child and youth care sectors. This includes dealing with historical concerns raised about the placement of children and youth in residential care settings, as well as identifying innovative strategies which offer new pathways for the integration of this often neglected sector of service within the broader area of child welfare. Each of the sixteen countries selected for inclusion is examined through a common matrix including the current policy context, key trends and initiatives, characteristics of children and youth served, preparation of residential care personnel, promising programmatic innovations, and present strengths and challenges. Individual country analyses are supplemented by regional exemplars of innovative residential programs and practice in areas such as family engagement, helping youth with the transition from care to community, promising model programs and reflections on recent policy reform initiatives. In addition to take-aways from each country, the book's closing chapter identifies specific implications for policy reform, empirical research and residential program innovation. What sets this book apart is its systematic cross-national appraisal of residential care for children and youth with an eye toward identifying innovative policies and practices undergirded by research. In so doing, it offers a unique contribution to the international child welfare literature.

For centuries, residential child and youth care systems worldwide have provided homes for vulnerable children and adolescents. The implementation of children's rights, especially the right of participation, is assessed as an important base for promoting the best interests of the child in an out-of-home care environment. Featuring contributions from distinguished international authors, this volume offers an in-depth understanding of crucial participation processes and underlying power structures when involving young people in decision-making about their care and everyday life in different out-of-home care institutions. Contributions cover a broad spectrum of current research findings concerning the participation of young people in foster families and residential living groups in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland as well as cross-nationals perspective on children and young people's participation in foster and residential care placements in Great Britain and France. The volume fills major gaps concerning the participation of young people in different out-of-home care and policy settings and will be required reading for policymakers, researchers, practitioners, scholars, and students interested in increasing opportunities for young people's participation and creating better out-of-home care settings for vulnerable young people.

This book analyses the types of and possibilities for care in social work with families in situations where evidence-based programmes, standardised forms of risk-assessment and intervention, performance management and incentives to increase cost-effectiveness take precedence. Offering a new framework for understanding and exploring theories and practices of care in social work with families, it is structured into • A comprehensive introduction to care theory and its relevance for social work. This includes critical reflections on'the missing link'between care theory and social work theory and the need for care theory in research on and social work with families.• A new framework for understanding core elements, dimensions and dilemmas of care in social work. This is based in theory and international research and is illustrated with exemplary'thick'ethnographic cases of statutory social work, homebased social work and family treatment. • Suggestions for enabling social change of the conditions for and practices of care in social work with families. By allowing critical reflection on this topic, this book will be of interest to all scholars, students and academics of social work and other professions dealing with child protection.

Over 30 years ago, the United Nations developed the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), heralding the importance of protecting children from a range of human rights violations. Among these are the right to be free from abuse and neglect at the hands of parents or other caregivers, and the responsibility of states to devise a protective response. How nations conceptualize harm and even how they define childhood varies markedly across the globe. This Handbook describes and analyzes the ways in which 50 countries from every continent, except Antarctica, have devised measures for child protection emphasized in the UNCRC. The Handbook discusses the legislative responses, public administrative systems, and the social service networks that governments have put in place to secure the protection of children against maltreatment and exploitation. Synthesizing data from across the world, the authors suggest a global typology of child protection systems for understanding the diversity of service responses. The typology consists of five ideal types that have as their emphasis protection against an array of risks to childhood and that represent the focal point for government intervention in the lives of families. They include child exploitation protective systems, child deprivation protective systems, child maltreatment protective systems, child well-being protective systems, and child rights protective systems. The Handbook is a valuable resource for researchers, students, and policymakers attempting to craft thoughtful state responses to children's needs

This book explains and discusses how a child's right to freedom of expression is upheld through practice and decision-making in Child Protection Services (CPS). Using the right to expression as stipulated in Article 12.2 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as a point of departure, it explains what CPS practices should look like and how they must operate to uphold and enforce the rights of the child by providing'the opportunity to be heard'in any administrative practice. Current research literature documents extensively, and across countries, how either the voice of the child is not heard or, alternatively, the existence of a pro forma/tokenistic approach to listening to the child throughout CPS practices. Taking a three-fold approach, this book establishes a clearer connection between rights and professional practice according to Article 12 extrapolates how rights-based practice is achieved during CPS practices provides a comprehensive answer to the challenge of implementing Article 12.2 through policy and legislation. It will be of interest to all students, academic and professionals working within child protection including social workers, probation officers, health and social care workers, lawyers and teachers.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book presents a narrative approach to creating a supportive environment for health and human service practitioners who work with vulnerable children and their families—one of the most difficult and complex areas of practice.People working in these environments are routinely exposed to violence and trauma and commonly experience symptoms of traumatic stress as a result. Traditionally, human service and health care service organisations have struggled to support practitioners who experience primary and secondary trauma in either a preventative context or post exposure. Using contemporary trauma theory, this book provides a trauma-informed support and supervision framework for supervisors and managers of practitioners that recognises the uniqueness of the practice field, the diversity of practitioners who undertake the work and the diversity of contexts in which they work.It will be required reading for all human service and health professionals, including social workers, psychologists and nurses as well as teachers, counsellors and youth workers.

Converting research evidence into practice is an issue of growing importance to many fields of policy and practice worldwide. This book, by a leading implementation specialist in child welfare and mental health, addresses the frustrating gap between research conducted on effective practices and the lack of routine use of such practices. Drawing on implementation science, the author introduces a model for reducing the gap between research and practice. This model highlights the roles of social networks, research evidence, practitioner/policymaker decision-making, research-practice-policy partnerships, and cultural exchanges between researchers and practitioners and policymakers. He concludes with a discussion of how the model may be used to develop more widespread use of evidence-based practices for the prevention and treatment of behavioural and mental health problems in youth-serving systems of care, as well as partnerships that promote ongoing quality improvement in services delivery.

This book sets out the current state of knowledge about what works in reducing impairments to children's health and development. Little and Maughan's book applies a high standard of proof and reproduces only the work of the leading intervention scientists from around the world. After discussing the real world challenges to more effective children's services, the book goes on to cover policy and practice proven to change the lives of all children, and extends also to effective programmes targeted at children with specific disorders. Examples include changes in household income, early years support, moving families to less disadvantaged communities, improving parenting and using schools to better mental health. The benefits of evidence-based programmes are specified, as are the costs to society of not intervening. The evidence is used to make recommendations about getting effective policy and practice into routine use, and includes illustrations of successful applications of these ideas.

Need is a popular but controversial concept in social policy.'Needs-led'has become a mantra in children's services in recent years, yet theorists still argue about the meaning and value of the concept of'need'. There are lots of needs assessment at the individual child and population levels, but case files vary enormously in quality and reports of need analyses frequently gather dust on shelves. How, then, should we define and measure children's needs, and how should this influence the design of services? This edited collection answers these questions in order to help policy makers, managers, practitioners and researchers with identifying and serving children in need. It offers a critical appraisal of the state of play regarding the theory of need, the needs that children have, methods for assessing children's needs at the individual and group levels, and approaches to designing services to meet identified needs.

This volume brings together a selection of the most influential and informative English language refereed journal articles on children in out-of-home care, their birth relatives and carers. The articles, which include empirical research and critiques of policy and practice, are mainly from the UK and USA, but include some coverage of child placement policy and practice in Australia and mainland Europe. The volume starts with a joint introductory chapter by the two distinguished authors (one American, one British) reviewing the state of knowledge on children in care and drawing attention to other important sources not included as chapters.

Dans le champ de la protection de l'enfance, le droit cherche à assurer un équilibre entre des intérêts publics et privés.Il s'agit de garantir la protection de l'enfant en danger, le respect des droits reconnus aux titulaires de l'autorité parentale, et la poursuite de l'intérêt général par les services qui interviennent auprès des familles.Protéger un enfant en danger nécessite de veiller à la cohérence et à la continuité des actions menées par les nombreux acteurs compétents dans ce domaine. Le respect des libertés individuelles reconnues à chacun des membres de la famille dépend alors en grande partie des partenariats institués au niveau local. En la matière, la décentralisation de l'aide et l'action sociales pose en des termes nouveaux la question de l'articulation possible entre la libre administration des collectivités territoriales et le maintien d'une égalité sur l'ensemble du territoire.Ce livre dresse une synthèse de l'ensemble des textes applicables en montrant en quoi les tensions qui existent aujourd'hui au sein du droit privé et du droit public ont des conséquences sur la mise en oeuvre de la protection de l'enfance.

Six Steps to Successful Child Advocacy: Changing the World for Children offers an interdisciplinary approach to child advocacy, nurturing key skills through a proven six-step process that has been used to train child advocates and create social change around the world. The approach is applicable for micro-advocacy for one child, mezzo-advocacy for a community or group of children, and macro-advocacy at a regional, national, or international level. This practical text offers skill-building activities and includes timely topics such as how to use social media for advocacy. Case studies of advocacy campaigns highlight applied approaches to advocacy across a range of issues, including child welfare, disability, early childhood, and education. Words of wisdom from noted child advocates from the U.S. and around the world, including a foreword from Dr. Jane Goodall, illustrate key concepts. Readers are guided through the process of developing a plan and tools for a real-life child advocacy campaign.