Child Welfare: Preparing Social Workers for Practice in the Field is a comprehensive text for child welfare courses taught from a social work perspective. This textbook provides a single source for all material necessary for a contextual child welfare course. As well as combining history, theory, and practice, the authors integrate different practice perspectives to teach social workers how to engage children and families at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Covering both broad issues, such as child welfare, child maltreatment, and responses to child maltreatment, and current issues in social care, including mandated reporting and evidence-based policy prevention and preservation, the material is designed to meet the needs of social work students entering the child welfare workforce. Child Welfare provides students in social work courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels with a single source for all material necessary to successfully navigate their studies and careers.

Child Welfare: Preparing Social Workers for Practice in the Field is a comprehensive text for child welfare courses taught from a social work perspective. This textbook provides a single source for all material necessary for a contextual child welfare course. As well as combining history, theory, and practice, the authors integrate different practice perspectives to teach social workers how to engage children and families at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Covering both broad issues, such as child welfare, child maltreatment, and responses to child maltreatment, and current issues in social care, including mandated reporting and evidence-based policy prevention and preservation, the material is designed to meet the needs of social work students entering the child welfare workforce. Child Welfare provides students in social work courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels with a single source for all material necessary to successfully navigate their studies and careers.

Within a historical and contemporary context, this book examines major policy practice and research issues as they jointly shape child welfare practice and its future. In addition to describing the major problems facing the field, the book highlights service innovations that have been developed in recent years. The resulting picture is encouraging, especially if certain major program reforms I are implemented and agencies are able to concentrate resources in a focused manner. The volume emphasizes families and children whose primary recourse to services has been through publicly funded child welfare agencies. The book considers historical areas of service—foster care and adoptions, in-home family-centered services, child-protective services, and residential services—where social work has an important role. Authors address the many fields of practice in which child and family services are provided or that involve substantial numbers of social work programs, such as services to adolescent parents, child mental health, education, and juvenile justice agencies. This new edition will continue to serve as a fundamen­tal introduction for new practitioners, as well as summary of recent developments for experienced practitioners.

Blends practitioner-focused and culturally responsive interventions to provide an innovative approach to learning With the aim of transforming flawed child welfare practices and policies into a more equitable system, this comprehensive, practice-based text delves into contemporary child welfare practice from antiracist, social justice, and decolonial perspectives. Incorporating first-hand knowledge of day-to-day practice, the book examines the many roles of professional child welfare workers, foundational skills they need to work in the field, the challenges and promises of trauma-informed practice, how to maintain a dedicated workforce, and strategies for reshaping the system. This book covers child welfare practice thoroughly, from reporting to investigating and everything in between. It also explores relevant policies, signs of abuse/neglect, building relationships, anti-racist approaches, and the importance of cultural sensitivity. Throughout, it emphasizes the trauma experienced by children and families involved in the system and the impact on child welfare professionals. Learning objectives, reflection boxes, discussion questions, and additional resources are included in every chapter to provide opportunities for students to apply concepts. Additionally, case studies in most chapters offer practical applications to real-world situations. To accompany the book, qualified instructors have access to an Instructor Manual, Sample Syllabus, Test Bank, chapter PowerPoints, and supplemental videos covering topics such as careers, engagement, and foster care. Key Features: Informed by real-world experience demonstrated through case studies, reflection boxes, and discussion questions Weaves antiracist, social justice, and decolonial perspectives throughout and includes the viewpoints of diverse voices from the field Provides extensive coverage of trauma-informed practice Devotes a separate chapter to the unique issues of foster children in school settings Connects content to the 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards from the Council on Social Work Education Covers a broad range of career opportunities for child welfare workers in myriad settings

"The timing of the publication with the revised Working Together guidelines could not be more advantageous. This book is a unique and important contribution to child care literature. No agency should be without." - Child Abuse Review Professionals concerned with the protection of children face many challenges. This work demands knowledge from several disciplines, a wide variety of skills, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The editors, Howard Dubowitz, a pediatrician, and Diane DePanfilis, a social worker, together with over 70 experts in this field offer what is known about how best to work with maltreated children and their families, in a very practical, concise, and user-friendly way. Structured to follow the life of a case from the time a report of child maltreatment is made through the various pathways in the child protection system, this edited volume synthesizes the best practice principles for responding to reports of child abuse and neglect; engaging children and other family members in intervention; developing cross-cultural practice competencies; assessing risk, evaluating safety, and conducting family assessments; defining outcomes and planning intervention; evaluating risk reduction; and making permanency decisions; and discusses the unique legal, medical, ethical, and other practice issues that work in the child protection field involves. Professionals facing tough dilemmas in practice should find valuable guidance in these pages.

This unique, multidisciplinary resource incorporates cutting-edge research and best practices in child welfare into a text that aims to teach and refine advanced child welfare skills for aspiring child welfare professionals. Featuring real-life examples and stories from the field, the handbook discusses existing methods and challenges in the field of child welfare practice. Chapters also include materials for instructors to use in classrooms or training settings. Among the topics covered: Overview of child welfare policies and how the child welfare system works Assessment tools and strategies used to identify various types of child abuse and neglect Individual, family, and community-level approaches to preventing child maltreatment and preserving families Promoting stability after foster care placement Effective collaboration while working with special populations Clinical supervision in child welfare practice Strategies for healthy professional development of child welfare practitioners The Handbook on Child Welfare Practice is a valuable resource as both a textbook in child welfare practice courses and a practical reference for child welfare professionals. This book will help develop a more knowledgeable and skilled child welfare workforce prepared to address the significant public health concern of child maltreatment.

This text presents a model of practice that stems from the goodness-of-fit between the child's needs (physical, developmental, social-emotional) and the parent's ability to adequately meet those needs according to the prevailing norms of society. Samantrai integrates policy, human behavior theories, issues in practice, skills of practice, multiculturalism, child abuse and neglect, and she develops and refines these concepts into the skills specifically needed by those working in public child welfare.

Child Welfare Social Work is a brief, introductory text for undergraduate child welfare courses covering the most important policy and practice issues.

This book provides a "work-in-progress" that seeks to capture the micro (direct service) and macro (managerial) perspectives related to identifying evidence for practice within the practice domain of public child welfare. It is divided into two categories; namely, evidence for direct practice and evidence for management practice. In Part I, the articles are categorized in the areas of child welfare assessment and child welfare outcomes. Expanded versions of the chapters can be accessed at www.bassc.net. In Part II, the focus is on organizational issues that relate to evidence for management practice. This section includes an overview of evidence-based practice from an organizational perspective along with evidence related to the experiences of others in implementing evidence-based practice. This book pushes the discussion of evidence-based practice in several new directions regarding: 1) the use of structured reviews to complement the systematic reviews of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaboratives, 2) the process of viewing the call for evidence-based practice as a goal or future vision of practice and evidence for practice provides a more immediate approach to promote evidence-informed practice, and 3) a recognition that evidence-informed practice is part of building agency-based knowledge sharing systems that involve the tacit and explicit knowledge needed to improve the outcomes of social services. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal Of Evidence-Based Social Work.