Conversational and applied, Social Policy for Children and Families is an award-winning collection of cutting-edge research from from across policy sectors in the human services.

Rev. ed. of: Social policy for children & families: a risk and resilience perspective. 2006.

Some for more government, others for less; but all call for different government methods for achieving socially agreed-upon goals to help America's children.

In the early 1970s, a new wave of public service announcements urged parents to "help end an American tradition" of child abuse. The message, relayed repeatedly over television and radio, urged abusive parents to seek help. Support groups for parents, including Parents Anonymous, proliferated across the country to deal with the seemingly burgeoning crisis. At the same time, an ever-increasing number of abused children were reported to child welfare agencies, due in part to an expansion of mandatory reporting laws and the creation of reporting hotlines across the nation. Here, Mical Raz examines this history of child abuse policy and charts how it changed since the late 1960s, specifically taking into account the frequency with which agencies removed African American children from their homes and placed them in foster care. Highlighting the rise of Parents Anonymous and connecting their activism to the sexual abuse moral panic that swept the country in the 1980s, Raz argues that these panics and policies—as well as biased viewpoints regarding race, class, and gender—played a powerful role shaping perceptions of child abuse. These perceptions were often directly at odds with the available data and disproportionately targeted poor African American families above others.

Successful social policies for children are critical to America's future. Yet the status of children in America suggests that the nation's policies may not be serving them well. Infant and child mortality rates in the U.S. remain high compared to other western industrialized nations; child poverty rates have worsened in the past decade; poor health care, child abuse, and inadequate schooling and child care persist. This book presents a new set of social policies designed to alleviate these problems and to help satisfy the needs of all children. The policies deal with the seven critical domains affecting children from birth through the passage to adulthood: child care, schooling, transition to work, health care, income security, physical security, and child abuse. While nearly everyone agrees that children are in trouble, there is considerable debate over what kind of trouble they are in, why this is so, and whether government can or should more actively seek to solve these problems. Americans are evenly divided on the question of whether children's problems are more economic or moral in origin. The seven proposals in this volume both reflect and cut across ideological disagreements. Some call for more government, others call for less, and all call for different government methods for achieving socially agreed upon goals. Recommendations include: replacing major welfare programs and tax subsidies with a set of universal policies, including national health insurance, child support assurance, and universal child care; offering publicly funded vouchers to allow poor children in inner-city neighborhoods to choose their own schools; using both private and governmental resources to get tough on crime through more stringent criminal justice policies and dramatic social measures; and expanding apprenticeship programs for non-college bound youths. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Barbara R. Bergmann and Robert I. Lerman, America

This up-to-date and comprehensive resource by leaders in child welfare is the first book to reflect the impact of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997. The text serves as a single-source reference for a wide array of professionals who work in children, youth, and family services in the United States-policymakers, social workers, psychologists, educators, attorneys, guardians ad litem, and family court judges& mdash;and as a text for students of child welfare practice and policy. Features include: * Organized around ASFA's guiding principles of well-being, safety, and permanency * Focus on evidence-based "best practices" * Case examples integrated throughout * First book to include data from the first round of National Child and Family Service Reviews Topics discussed include the latest on prevention of child abuse and neglect and child protective services; risk and resilience in child development; engaging families; connecting families with public and community resources; health and mental health care needs of children and adolescents; domestic violence; substance abuse in the family; family preservation services; family support services and the integration of family-centered practices in child welfare; gay and lesbian adolescents and their families; children with disabilities; and runaway and homeless youth. The contributors also explore issues pertaining to foster care and adoption, including a focus on permanency planning for children and youth and the need to provide services that are individualized and culturally and spiritually responsive to clients. A review of salient systemic issues in the field of children, youth, and family services completes this collection.

Social Policy for Child and Family Development: A Systems/Dialectical Perspective is designed to help students think critically and dialectically about social policies that affect children and families. Based on the belief that no single policymaking position has all the answers, the book offers a model that reduces the tendency to present only one viewpoint. As they move through the text, readers use this model to evaluate the effectiveness of specific policies. The book addresses issues such as alcohol, nicotine, and drug use during pregnancy, social policy and poverty, education, family development, and technology. The material also discusses child abuse and neglect, social media and ethnicity, and the future of social policy on child and family development. Each chapter includes learning objectives, key terms, study questions, a debate activity, additional reading resources, and a list of references. Social Policy for Child and Family Development is well suited to courses in child and family studies or consumer sciences. Thomas W. Roberts is a professor in the Department of Child and Family Development at San Diego State University. He teaches courses in family studies and public policy. His research interests include attachment in long-term marriages, parenting, applying neuroscience to marital therapy, and the role of religion and ethical values on family development. He has numerous publications and is the author of the book A Systems Perspective of Parenting: the Child, the Family and the Social Network. He is the founder and President of Improving Developmental Experiences Across the Lifespan (IDEALS), a 501(c)3 non-profit. Dr. Roberts received his Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1984.