Faced with rapidly changing social and economic conditions, service professionals, policy developers, and researchers have raised significant concerns about the Canadian child welfare system. This book draws inspiration from experiences with three broad, international child welfare paradigms—child protection, family service, and community healing/caring (First Nations)—to look at how specific practices in other countries, as well as alternative experiments in Canada, might foster positive innovations in the Canadian child welfare approach. Foundational values and purposes, systems design and policy, and organization and management are discussed, as are front-line service delivery, service provider work environments, and the realities of daily living for families. Informed by recent research, the contributors provide clear directions for policy, administration, and service-delivery reforms. Informing policy debates addressing child maltreatment and family welfare, this book will serve as a vital resource for managers, service providers, professionals, and students in the fields of social work, child and youth care, family studies, psychology, and special education.

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. Could these shortcomings be improved through organizational or system reform? Based on findings from a decade’s worth of research, Creating Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare provides original reflections on the everyday realities of families and front-line service providers involved with the system. It includes data from a variety of regions and situations, all linked together through a common investigatory framework. The contributors highlight areas of concern in current approaches to child and family welfare, but also propose new solutions that would make the system more welcoming and helpful both for families and for service providers.

Child and family welfare systems confront the problems of families throughout the world on a daily basis. Whilst there may be differences between nations and organisations, there are also similarities. This book presents a comparative study of child and family welfare models in the developed nations.

Faced with rapidly changing social and economic conditions, service professionals, policy developers, and researchers have raised significant concerns about the Canadian child welfare system. This book draws inspiration from experiences with three broad, international child welfare paradigms—child protection, family service, and community healing/caring (First Nations)—to look at how specific practices in other countries, as well as alternative experiments in Canada, might foster positive innovations in the Canadian child welfare approach. Foundational values and purposes, systems design and policy, and organization and management are discussed, as are front-line service delivery, service provider work environments, and the realities of daily living for families. Informed by recent research, the contributors provide clear directions for policy, administration, and service-delivery reforms. Informing policy debates addressing child maltreatment and family welfare, this book will serve as a vital resource for managers, service providers, professionals, and students in the fields of social work, child and youth care, family studies, psychology, and special education.

The need for services that respond to the ‘maltreatment’ of children and to the struggles of families is at the core of social service systems in all developed nations. While these child and family welfare systems confront similar problems and incorporate common elements, there are substantial differences in philosophy, organization, and operation across international settings and models. In this new collection of essays, Nancy Freymond and Gary Cameron have brought together some of the finest international minds to provide an original and integrated discussion of child protection, family service, and community caring models of child and family welfare. The volume not only examines child protection and family service approaches within Western nations – including Canada, the United States, England, the Netherlands, France, and Sweden – it is also the first comparative study to give equal attention to Aboriginal community caring models in Canada and New Zealand. The comparisons made by the essays in this volume allow for a consideration of constructive and feasible innovations in child and family welfare and contribute to an enriched debate around each system. This book will be of great benefit to the field for many years to come.

In the context of the increasing global movement of people and a growing evidence base for differing outcomes in child welfare, Routledge Handbook of Global Child Welfare provides a compelling account of child welfare, grounded in the latest theory, policy and practice. Drawing on eminent international expertise, the book offers a coherent and comprehensive overview of the policies, systems and practices that can deliver the best outcomes for children. It considers the challenges faced by children globally, and the difference families, services and professionals can make. This ambitious and far-reaching handbook is essential reading for everyone working to make the world a better and safer place for children.

This book identifies and analyses differences between the four UK nations in the way child protection systems are being developed, thought about and put into practice. Covering key areas such as inter-agency working and the role of local safeguarding children boards, it draws out important implications for policy and practice across the UK.

Children who receive child welfare services are a vulnerable group, and their numbers are growing. All who care about them need to be fully informed about current outcomes, indicators of success and failure, and best practices. This second edition of Child Welfare: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice has a special focus on Canadian child welfare and contains entirely new material on these important themes. The book highlights major developments in child welfare and shows how these inform directions taken in research, policy, and practice. The book includes new sections on Indigenous issues and best practices, and several of its chapters review efforts to increase supports for families in need. Contributions from new and international authors illustrate the endemic nature of child welfare challenges and how we can learn from these experiences. Contributors provide recommendations for promoting best practice and enhancing resilience among children and families. Closing chapters within each section and at the end of the book summarize key theoretical and practice issues along with recommendations to improve the research, policy, and practice continuum in child welfare. The challenge is to translate good research into policy and practice in ways that enhance the life chances of children who need our care and protection.

"cross the spectrum of political ideologies there is, in principle, widespread agreement that the state has a legitimate role in protecting children from harm. Even the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman (1962), among the most ardent liberal supporters of the laissez faire philosophy, recognized this "paternalistic" function of government. At the same time, the traditional view of children, that they are the property of the father (pater) or the parents, is under pressure (Zelizer, 1994; James & Prout, 1997; Archard 2004). Societies are at an intersection when it comes to how children are treated and how their rights are respected, which creates tensions in the traditional relationship between the family and the state. Children are a focus of government responsibility under certain state-defined norms relating to harm and need. And parents are sometimes constrained by the state from exercising their (familial or property) rights under state-defined criteria of harm and need"--

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 media By 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.