Using the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a framework, issues such as child trafficking, child soldiers, and child maltreatment are examined in nations around the world, as well as efforts to solve these problems.
In the early 1990s 50,000 children were in New York City's foster care system. By 2011 there were fewer than 15,000. In his book, David Tobis shows how such radical change was driven largely by a movement of mothers whose children had been placed into foster care, who fought to become advocates and stakeholders in a system that had previously viewed them as part of the problem. This book serves as an example of how advocates can change a system, as told from the perspective of key figures, change agents, and the parent advocates themselves.
Adoption has long been enmeshed in the politics of abortion. But as award-winning journalist Joyce makes clear, adoption has lately become entangled in the conservative Christian agenda.
Child Protection and Child Welfare draws on the knowledge of child protection experts and social care professionals to provide an authoritative international overview of child protection strategy and policy. Devoting particular attention to the role played by culture in determining child welfare issues and child protection responses, this book illustrates the impact of both long-term influences, such as the legacy of the caste system in India, and more recent global events, such as the development of international trade in Ghana and shrinking budgets in Italy on national approaches to supporting families and children. The international perspective aims to enhance our understanding of the range of possible approaches, encouraging researchers, policymakers and practitioners to think critically about current models, and providing insights for developing practice. This important book will be essential reading for social workers, policy makers, child protection service workers, commissioners and managers across child and family welfare services, as well as researchers and academics in the field.
Lessons from child protection errors and mistakes in 11 countries in Europe and North America are drawn together in a stimulating study from leading researchers in the field. By comparing and contrasting impacts, responses and responsibilities, it deepens understanding of how child protection systems fail and points to ideas for risk reduction.
to establish impact, attributing observed changes in welfare to the intervention, while identifying key factors of success. Impact evaluations are aimed at providing feedback to help improve the design of programs and policies. They also provide greater accountability and a tool for dynamic learning, allowing policymakers to improve ongoing programs and ultimately better allocate funds across programs. Such a causal analysis is essential for understanding the relative role of alternative interventions in reducing poverty. The papers in this section again adopt a variety of techniques. The rst two impact evaluation studies employ propensity score matching to establish, ex-post, a valid control group to assess the impact on child schooling outcomes among b- e ciaries of various interventions in Kenya and Ethiopia. The third chapter c- ries out an ex-ante evaluation of alternative cash transfer programs on child school attendance in Uruguay. The nal paper further carries out in-depth macro-modeling and micro-regression analysis to simulate the impacts of the food crisis and various policy responses, including food subsidies and cash transfers, on various dimensions of child poverty in Mali. Though using different approaches, the studies are gen- ally in agreement concerning the positive impact of the cash transfer program on child schooling and labor market outcomes. The studies from Kenya and Uruguay both nd that the schooling interventions are progressive.
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.