Multicultural Child Maltreatment Risk Assessment provides detailed descriptions of child maltreatment assessment and key strategies for culturally informed risk assessment in families. The book presents a new model for evaluating families that includes cultural competence, a conceptualization of adequate parenting, and strategies for reflective decision making. Chapters address a range of factors including race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality. Ten case studies, each including discussion prompts, challenge the reader to apply forensic evaluation techniques for effective and ethical decision making in complex and ambiguous cases. Both experienced mental health providers and students will come away from the book with a deeper understanding of child maltreatment and its effects, models and modes of assessment, and factors that place families at greater risk.
Conduct targeted and focused evaluations of child abuse and neglect! Child Maltreatment Risk Assessments: An Evaluation Guide is a professional practice manual designed to assist clinicians in conducting forensic risk assessment in child maltreatment cases. The authors—each with an extensive background in forensic child abuse evaluation—present up-to-date research findings and provide practical, fact-based information on key issues. The book is an essential reference source on procedural issues, treatment options, and risk management strategies necessary to make high-quality, ethical evaluations. Child maltreatment risk assessments are complex, specialized evaluations with the potential for permanent legal termination of all parent-child contact on one hand, and the possibility of injury and even death on the other. Because of the weighty nature of these issues, the legal standards imposed on individual states to justify intervention is great, and evaluators must be well versed in the most current material available. Child Maltreatment Risk Assessments provides up-to-date information on the effects of maltreatment, empirically based risk factors for child abuse and neglect, specialized assessment techniques and interventions,and professional practice issues. The book emphasizes the importance of individual and cultural differences. Child Maltreatment Risk Assessments also includes a step-by-step guide to conducting and writing quality evaluations, including: components of an evaluation report forensic versus clinical evaluations methods of assessment assessment domains and much more! Child Maltreatment Risk Assessments: An Evaluation Guide is an invaluable tool for clinicians, lawyers and judges, human service agency personnel, and others involved in child maltreatment cases as well as students who represent the next generation of clinicians working in child abuse prevention and treatment.
Given the problems experienced by workers using the current system and the difficulty of implement- ing new decision-making protocols, the Ministry of Children and Youth Services (MYCS) decided to obtain input from the field prior to restructuring the current system. [...] While completing this task, they were asked to take notes in relation to the following: • Ease of use • Availability of requested information The Perceived Utility of Child Maltreatment Risk Assessment and Clinical Assessment Tools 5 • Utility as a decision aid • How the tool compared to the equivalent instruments in the ORAM • Potential of the tool to work in concert with other, more detailed ass [...] The SDM clinical assessment tool, the California Family Strengths and Needs, is designed to provide detailed, individualized information about the issues that brought the family to the attention of the child welfare system, and is structured in a way that facili- tates case planning. [...] Several participants suggested that it would be useful to have a space at the top of the California Safety Assessment to write the referral number, ages of the chil- dren, whether the child was placed, and the coding from the Eligibility Spectrum. [...] That is, the purpose of the tool, the significance of the risk rating, and how the rating guides further action are essential and time-intensive training needs.
This expertly written book provides an accessible framework for culturally competent practice with children and families in child maltreatment cases. Numerous workable strategies and concrete examples are presented to help readers address cultural concerns at each stage of the assessment and intervention process. Professionals and students learn new ways of thinking about their own cultural viewpoints as they gain critical skills for maximizing the accuracy of assessments for physical and sexual abuse; overcoming language barriers in parent and child interviews; respecting families' values and beliefs while ensuring children's safety; creating a welcoming agency environment; and more.
The second edition of Managing Clinical Risk is an authoritative guide on how to engage in risk assessment and management practice in evidence-based, accountable and effective ways. Over the course of a dozen chapters, each oriented around a brief case study reflecting a different area of risk, practitioners are offered guidance on how to read referrals, how to decide what information matters to their evaluations, how to speak to a person who may be reluctant to engage in an assessment of this kind, how to organise the information they have gathered in order to prepare a risk formulation that will in turn guide risk management, and how to communicate opinions and recommendations in ways that have an impact. The book provides an evidence-based understanding of risk assessment and management in key areas of practice – violence, sexual violence, suicidal and self-harmful behaviour, as well as family and relationship violence, organised criminal and group-based violence, and violent extremism. Practices relevant to understanding violent behaviour in individuals are contrasted with those better suited for working with groups and organisations. How practitioners can take account of the diversity of the clients with whom they work is a central consideration in every chapter. And helping practitioners develop the skills to enable them to formulate risk where there may be multiple areas of concern is a key objective of this book. All the contributors to this updated guide to effective practice are scholar-practitioners – experienced professionals with a track record of writing and teaching about risk assessment and management practice in their respective fields. Therefore, this book contains realistic rather than idealistic representations of the work required to prevent harmful behaviour by the kinds of clients they work with. Together, contributors combine theoretical and research knowledge with a wealth of practical skills, emphasising the collaborative and recovery-focused nature of modern risk management.
Serving African American Children was initiated to present an African American perspective on child welfare issues affecting African American children. The chapters in this volume challenge the child welfare community to ensure that all African American children receive protection, nurturing, and an improved quality of life; to create and sustain mutual communication and support through program development; to ensure that African American consultants are involved in the evaluation of agencies where African American populations represent a significant proportion of the service population; and to increase African American leadership through education and training opportunities in preparation for executive level positions. Major chapters and contributors to Serving African American Children include: "Family Preservation and Support Services: A Missed Opportunity for Kinship Care" by Julia Danzy and Sondra M. Jackson; "Achieving Same-Race Adoptive Placements for African American Children" by Ruth G. McRoy, Zena Oglesby, and Helen Grape; "African American Families and HIV/AIDS: Caring for Surviving Children" by Alma J. Carten and Ilene Fennoy; "A Rite of Passage Approach Designed to Preserve the Families of Substance-Abusing African American Women" by Vanesta L. Poitier, Makini Niliwaambieni, and Cyprian Lamar Rowe; and "An Afrocentric Program for African American Males in the Juvenile Justice System" by Aminifu R. Harvey and Antoinette A. Coleman. The chapters reflect a variety of policy, research, and practice issues; clinical techniques and treatment models; and new perspectives in child welfare. The theme that runs throughout each chapter is the grave concern about the overrepresentation of African American children and families in the child welfare system, and about the limited if not missing influence of the African American perspective on policy and practice. Serving African American Children is a book of vital importance and should be read by all social workers, sociologists, African American studies specialists, and professionals in the field of child welfare.
Child maltreatment professionals from all disciplines struggle to find better ways of understanding and treating the families and children affected by maltreatment. Since the mid-1960s, the "battered child syndrome," and recent high-profile abuse cases, a plethora of research and literature on child maltreatment has emerged, yet this is the first volume to offer a comprehensive integrated analysis for understanding, assessing, and treating child maltreatment within the ecological framework in a developmental context. This framework systematically organizes and integrates the complex empirical literature in child maltreatment and development, including the often-overlooked period of adolescence. Viewing child maltreatment from an ecological perspective, this volume identifies the risk and protective factors correlated with abuse and neglect. The authors present a comprehensive assessment framework, addressing the multiple developmental and environmental factors unique to each case. This framework fully considers risk and protective factors and their relationship to individuals, families, and environmental elements, presenting a much-needed perspective for today's child protective services workers. Understanding Child Maltreatment is the first of its kind. While most books broadly address the developmental consequences of maltreatment, this volume goes further by proposing assessment and intervention strategies based on a deep understanding of each stage of a child's development. Interventions center on the caregiver and the family, with particular attention to parenting skills and the challenges the child may experience within his or her developmental stage. Each chapter emphasizes empirically based interventions and includes a case illustration that guides readers in applying these concepts to their own practice. Providing a comprehensive, nuanced perspective on maltreatment, this book will be invaluable to students, researchers, and professionals.
