The voices that are represented in this book offer differing perspectives on ways to support inner-city children and families. Each essay offers a unique contribution to our understanding of the interdependence of the people in these communities, yet all share the common message that inner-city children and families have strengths that can be built on to maximize their positive outcomes. This book is especially relevant to teachers who work with children and families with challenges.

Needs assessments identify the needs for services, answering questions about who needs these services and in what priority. Asset assessments focuses on existing resources; combing both needs and asset assesments helps find the gaps in these services and is useful to organizations and communities.

No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.

Community Capacity and Resilience in Latin America addresses the role of communities in building their capacity to increase resiliency and carry out rural development strategies in Latin America. Resiliency in a community sense is associated with an ability to address stress and respond to shock while obtaining participatory engagement in community assessment, planning and outcome. Although the political contexts for community development have changed dramatically in a number of Latin American countries in recent years, there are growing opportunities and examples of communities working together to address common problems and improve collective quality of life. This book links scholarship that highlights community development praxis using new frameworks to understand the potential for community capacity and resiliency. By rejecting old linear models of development, based on technology transfer and diffusion of technology, many communities in Latin America have built capacity of their capital assets to become more resilient and adapt positively to change. This book is an essential resource for academics and practitioners of rural development, demonstrating that there is much we can learn from the skills of self-diagnosis and building on existing assets to enhance community capitals. Chapter 3 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license.

The story of life in inner-city America and the education of its people is often recounted as a tragedy; the ending is often predictable and usually dire, highlighting deficiency, failure, and negative trends. As with most social problems, children and youth in the inner cities are hit hardest. But this dismal view is only half of the full picture. The cities of our nation are a startling juxtaposition between the despairing and the hopeful, between disorganization and restorative potential. Alongside the poverty and unemployment, the street-fights and drug deals, are a wealth of cultural, economic, educational, and social resources. Often ignored are the resilience and the ability for adaptation which help many who are seemingly confined by circumstance to struggle and succeed "in the face of the odds." This book helps to broaden the utilization of ways to magnify the circumstances known to enhance development and education, so that the burden of adversity is reduced and opportunities are advanced for all children and youth -- especially the children and youth of the inner cities who are in at-risk circumstances. The focus is on: * raising consciousness about the opportunities available to foster resilience among children, families, and communities, and * synthesizing the knowledge base that is central to implementing improvements which serve to better the circumstances and educational opportunities of children and families. This volume is intended for a wide audience of readers, but particularly those who are in a position to shape public policy and deliver educational and human services.

This book focuses on a gap in current social work practice theory: community change. Much work in this area of macro practice, particularly around "grassroots" community organizing, has a somewhat dated feel to it, is highly ideological in orientation, or suffers from superficiality, particularly in the area of theory and practical application. Set against the context of an often narrowly constructed "clinical" emphasis on practice education, coupled with social work's own current rendering of "scientific management," community practice often takes second or third billing in many professional curricula despite its deep roots in the overall field of social welfare. Drawing on extensive case study data from three significant community-building initiatives, program data from numerous other community capacity-building efforts, key informant interviews, and an excellent literature review, Chaskin and his colleagues draw implications for crafting community change strategies as well as for creating and sustaining the organizational infrastructure necessary to support them. The authors bring to bear the perspectives of a variety of professional disciplines including sociology, urban planning, psychology, and social work. Building Community Capacity takes a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to a subject of wide and current concern: the role of neighborhood and community structures in the delivery of human services or, as the authors put it, "a place where programs and problems can be fitted together." Social work scholars and students of community practice seeking new conceptual frameworks and insights from research to inform novel community interventions will find much of value in Building Community Capacity.

Leadership for Change in Teacher Education: Voices of Canadian Deans of Education presents a rich sampling of diverse perspectives on the topic in a unique collection of reflections contributed by Canadian deans of education. The focus of the inquiry, “What would we hear from deans of education invited to share their perspectives on leadership for change in contemporary teacher education?” invited deans of education to reflect on the research, policies and practices currently informing their leadership. The results, fourteen engaging and provocative essays, offer important insights and increased understandings of the complex nature of their work and explore concerns raised in relation to lived experience and the multi-faceted processes of leading change for teacher education in contemporary contexts. Reflections in these short essays underscore the critical role of deans in provoking, supporting and championing new ideas and approaches to pedagogy for teacher education, and make clear the complexities inherent in leading the change. The Coda highlights the limited scope of related research available in the current literature and recommends urgent attention, in both research and practice, to the preparation of deans and support for their ongoing professional learning and sustainable leadership. This book will be of great interest to scholars, deans of education, teacher educators, university administrators and other policymakers. “Leadership for Change was a catalyst to immersing myself in this book, promising as it does the “Voices of Canadian Deans of Education”. A member of the Association of Canadian Deans of Education (ACDE) for over a decade, I have been honoured to join these voices around many conference tables and other informal sessions. The promise of important insights these voices can share is fulfilled within every one of the compelling chapters. The book reminds us of the diverse geographical, political, and theoretical contexts that enhance understandings of multiple perspectives on leadership and the complex educational challenges inherent in contemporary teacher education. A deep commitment to public education and a profound work ethic towards stellar, relevant teacher education resonates across the work of these deans of education. This thought-provoking book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on reconceptualising leadership for teacher education.” – Professor Fern Snart, Dean of Education, University of Alberta