The number of children of color entering the child welfare system in the United States is disproportionately high. Not only are children of color removed from parental custody and placed in care more often than their white counterparts, but they also remain in care longer, receive fewer services, and have less contact with the caseworkers assigned to them. This book identifies the practice and policy changes required to successfully address the unequal treatment of children of color in the child welfare system and their implications for social work education, caseworker training, and institutional change. It critiques many of the existing social welfare acts and policies in terms of their treatment of children of color, and it provides best practices for each decision point in the child welfare process and for cultural competency measures and training. The text offers extensive measurement instruments that agencies can use to assess and correct institutional racism. To improve social work education, the book includes several model syllabi for the curriculum, and to deepen the discipline's engagement with the issue of institutional racism, the text concludes with a discussion of future directions for research and policy.

Product Description: The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which became law in 1997, elicited a major shift in federal policy and thinking toward child welfare, emphasizing children's safety, permanency, and well-being over preserving biological ties at all costs...read more

Product Description: The North American approach to child protection is broadly accepted, despite frequent criticisms of its core limitations: parental fear and resistance, the limited range of services and supports available to families, escalating costs, and high stress and turnover among service providers...read more

Product Description: Child welfare is the oldest specialization within social work practice and the only specialty area in which social work is the host profession.  This edited volume provides a unique and comprehensive overview of practice issues relevant to contemporary child welfare professionals entering the field as well as those already working in direct service and management positions...read more

Product Description: This text proposes corrective action to improve the institutional care of African American children and their families, calling attention to the specific needs of this population and the historical, social, and political factors that have shaped its experience within the child welfare system...read more

Product Description: In this powerful and culminating work about a group of inner-city children he has known for many years, Jonathan Kozol returns to the scene of his previous prize-winning books, and to the children he has vividly portrayed, to share with us their fascinating journeys and unexpected victories as they grow into adulthood...read more

Product Description: Edited by Alice Lieberman and Kristine Nelson, this timely book focuses on the relationship between the Children's Bureau and social work education. From its beginnings a century ago in the Department of Labor, the Children's Bureau moved first to protect vulnerable child laborers and later, as part of the Department of Health and Human Services, confronted broader problems such as infant mortality, poor nutrition, and juvenile delinquency...read more

Product Description: This book proposes what, to many professionals in the child welfare field, will appear a radically different explanation for our society's decisions to protect children from harm and for the significant drop in substantiated child abuse numbers...read more

Exploring Child Welfare provides an overall look at all aspects of the provision of services for children and their families, from services that enhance and support family life to those that substitute for the child's own home. The Third Edition of this accessible and engaging text continues to reflect the author's strong practice perspective and incorporates new developments in welfare reform and child welfare services. The author bases her work on more than 30 years of experience in almost all areas of children's services, including protective services, foster care, adoption, court services, residential treatment and school-based services.

Product Description: Maternal and Child Health: Programs, Problems, and Policy in Public Health, Third Edition takes a developmental approach to learning about Maternal and Child Health (MCH). Organized according to fundamental principles of MCH, the book covers traditional MCH topics such as family planning and maternal and infant health as well as skills that are applicable across Public Heath disciplines such as planning, research, monitoring, and advocacy...read more