Deals with the promotion of emotional well-being in families, and the prevention of child maltreatment. Values, policies and resources are examined as both facilitators of, and barriers to, effective action.

Improving the well-being of children is more effective when social care professionals work with the children's parents, families and communities. This collection brings together innovative interventions designed to nurture children's health and welfare, and analyses which types of programmes are most effective and why. The contributors explore the impact of poverty on children's development and assess national initiatives set up to assess and reduce need. They present examples from the UK, US, Canada and Australia of specific interventions to counter or prevent difficulties in the domains of child development, parenting capacity and wider environmental factors. Many contributions demonstrate the importance of engaging with service users and helping communities to shape and direct their own programmes for change. The final section of the book presents useful approaches to assessing and evaluating services. Demonstrating the need for close inter-agency collaboration and `joined up' services, this book is essential reading for policy makers, managers and practitioners in child welfare agencies, and social work academics and students.

In 1994 a group of researchers and decision makers met to discuss the state of child welfare. Also present were a few practitioners and two youth in care. Six years later, when they met again, the number of practitioners and youth had grown considerably and were joined by a strong contingent of foster parents. Thus the findings and insights presented were affirmed or challenged by those most affected -- those on the front line. It was an exciting event, worth capturing in book form. Kathleen Kufeldt and Brad McKenzie have gathered the papers presented at the 2000 Symposium and have organised them under four themes: incidence and characteristics of child maltreatment; the continuum of care; policy and practice; and future directions. An analysis and synthesis of the work informs each of these themes, while an eight-point research agenda developed in an earlier symposium is used to assess developments to date and provide guidance for the future.

Children and young people in care who have been traumatized need a therapeutic environment where they can heal and which meets their emotional and developmental needs. This book provides a model of care for traumatized children and young people, based on theory and practice experience pioneered at the Lighthouse Foundation, Australia. The authors explain the impact of trauma on child development, drawing on psychodynamic, attachment and neurobiological trauma theories. The practical aspects of undertaking therapeutic care are then outlined, covering everything from forming therapeutic relationships to the importance of the home environment and daily routines. The book considers the totality of the child's experience at the individual, group, organization and community levels and argues that attention to all of these is essential if the child is to achieve wellness. Case material from both children and carers are used throughout to illustrate both the impact of trauma and how children have been helped to recovery through therapeutic care. This book will provide anyone caring for traumatized children and young people in a residential setting with both the understanding and the practical knowledge to help children recover. It will be essential reading for managers and decision-makers responsible for looked after children, child care workers such as residential and foster carers, youth workers, social workers, mental health workers and child welfare academics.

Services for families and children are rightfully the focus of intense scrutiny and debate, and there is a clear need to establish a knowledge of which services work well. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of research evidence from the UK and USA on the effectiveness of selected child welfare interventions. It addresses the challenges of measuring effectiveness in child welfare and explains the policy context for child welfare service delivery. Leading international contributors summarize the evidence of effectiveness in each core area, and consider the impact on children's development, parenting capacity and the wider community. Critically, the book also draws out the implications of the evidence for policy, practice and service delivery as well as for future research. This book is essential reading for policy makers, practitioners and commissioners of services in child welfare as well as students and researchers.

This reader compares up-to-date policy and research evidence from the UK and USA on the effectiveness of core child welfare interventions. The text shows how knowledge of effective interventions can be used to improve assessment of needs, and planning and reviewing services to children and their families.

Preventing Child Maltreatment: Multicultural Considerations in the United States is the first book in a concentrated series that examines child maltreatment across minoritized, cultural groups. Specifically, this volume examines core multicultural concepts (e.g., intersectionality, acculturation, spirituality, oppression) as they relate to child maltreatment in the United States, while the other books take a closer look at particular ethnic or racial communities in this country. Additionally, this book examines child maltreatment through the intersection of feminist, multicultural, and prevention/wellness promotion lenses. Recommendations for treatment in each book build on a foundation of prevention and wellness promotion, along with multicultural and feminist theories. Throughout this book, five case studies, which are introduced in Chapter One, are revisited to help the readers make important and meaningful connections between theory and practice.

The Highfield Community Enrichment Project is one of eight demonstration sites for the 'Better Beginnings, Better Futures' initiative, a comprehensive, community-driven program dedicated to the prevention of children's mental health problems in Ontario and the promotion of child, family, and community wellness. Drawing from this multi-method, longitudinal research project, authors Geoffrey Nelson, S. Mark Pancer, Karen Hayward, and Ray DeV. Peters have written Partnerships for Prevention, providing insights and lessons on how prevention programs can be planned, implemented, and managed in a low-income, multicultural context with a high degree of community involvement. The authors demonstrate not just that the program works, but how it works, and in so doing make a contribution to theory, research, and practice in primary prevention and mental health promotion for children. Partnerships for Prevention provides a great deal of knowledge that will be of interest and use to policy-makers, program planners, practitioners, and community residents, who wish to create prevention programs.