Legal and behavioral science scholars examine the significance of the recent changes in laws affecting child and youth services and the conflicts those changes have engendered. Providers of child and youth services now can have at their fingertips the most recent information on changes in the law related to consent to treatment by children, special education, child abuse policy, procedural reform in divorce custody resolution, and juvenile justice reform. Some of the timely issues addressed in this highly acclaimed volume include the fall of the rehabilitative ideal in the juvenile justice system, the increasing concern for juvenile's procedural rights, child custody disputes, and laws regulating educational and treatment services. Legal Reforms Affecting Child and Youth Services is an essential volume for providers of services in education, pediatrics, mental health, juvenile justice, and child welfare. The authors integrate legal analyses of key concepts with discussion of potential behavioral science contributions to formulation and implementation of legal reforms. In each instance, the implications of these reforms for service delivery systems are explored with attention to gaps in available research and ambiguities in the existing law.
Legal and behavioral science scholars examine the significance of the recent changes in laws affecting child and youth services and the conflicts those changes have engendered. Providers of child and youth services now can have at their fingertips the most recent information on changes in the law related to consent to treatment by children, special education, child abuse policy, procedural reform in divorce custody resolution, and juvenile justice reform. Some of the timely issues addressed in this highly acclaimed volume include the fall of the rehabilitative ideal in the juvenile justice system, the increasing concern for juvenile's procedural rights, child custody disputes, and laws regulating educational and treatment services. Legal Reforms Affecting Child and Youth Services is an essential volume for providers of services in education, pediatrics, mental health, juvenile justice, and child welfare. The authors integrate legal analyses of key concepts with discussion of potential behavioral science contributions to formulation and implementation of legal reforms. In each instance, the implications of these reforms for service delivery systems are explored with attention to gaps in available research and ambiguities in the existing law.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.
Travels in the Trench Between Child Welfare Theory and Practice examines how the child welfare field's rush to establish credibility and permanence through program growth during the post World War II era gave rise to a massive but fragile conglomerate unprepared to prove its merits when challenged by an increasingly dubious public. Author George Thomas proposes a broad-based shift from program growth to knowledge-based growth in policy, management, education, research, and information technology initiatives to revitalize performance and restore public confidence in the system.Thomas's book proposes to shift the leadership emphasis away from the "big business" flavor of child welfare and re-define it into a mediator role of trusting worker and client competencies. Travels in the Trench Between Child Welfare Theory and Practice shows how the two sides merge and concentrate on five key issues: Policy--Contrasts the impact of the two orientations on shaping the field's sense of mission, defining its role, establishing its priorities for growth relative to size, specialization, and knowledge base, and stimulating or reducing client adversarialism and public perceptions of chronic mission failure. Management--Examines how the priorities of the two orientations differ relative to preserving hierarchical authority, rewarding work that exceeds mandates, promoting innovation and experimentation, and relying on process as distinct from client outcome accountability. Education--Examines how the priorities of the two orientations differ relative to relying on manpower and brain power, on "one right way" of doing things versus doing what is legal and ethical. Research--Examines how the priorities of the two orientations differ relative to confirming the "rightness" of the field's existing knowledge base and testing it to expand its scientifically validated portion through discovery. Information Technology--Explores how the priorities of the two orientations differ relative to disclosing and preserving privileged communications, developing common and specialized language, and breaking down or protecting authority and status differentials.This historical and cross-sectional analysis forms a framework proposing that the field's future value in meeting the nation's child welfare needs must have a willingness to shift its commitments from problem to competency-oriented theory and practice, to accept a de-emphasis on growth and a reduction in specialization, and to redirect investments in education, research, and information technology. According to Thomas, this enables readers to revitalize practice wisdom, grow the scientifically validated portion of the field's knowledge base, and begin to restore public confidence in the system.The book's contents are presented in interview style to enliven the material and make it more accessible to a wide audience. The reader determines the sense and direction of the analysis and the appropriateness of the questions from which it flows. Travels in the Trenches is intended to promote critical analysis of the link between long range vision and its impact on daily practice.
This seminal book in the literature of child protective services stimulates critical thinking and informed discussion for those professionals and educators concerned with the quality of children’s protective services. The first book of its kind to present scholarly reports on false allegations, Assessing Child Maltreatment Reports tackles the age-old problem of deciding which reports, verbal or written, represent truth and which represent falsehood. When one deals with accusations in the area of child maltreatment, special problems are posed. This vital resource brings home the complexity and seriousness of confronting the need to separate true reports from false reports. Given the serious consequences of reports of maltreatment, determining the accuracy or inaccuracy of such reports is of major critical importance to all concerned and the parents, children, and professionals directly involved. This book deals effectively and practically with the everyday work of assessing the validity and reliability of maltreatment reports and guides professionals through rough waters of finding truth with helpful research.This courageous book provides hope for establishing a deeper understanding of the broad system of child protection and consequently, enables professionals to better handle individual crises and cases. Containing a range of chapters--authored by leading academic researchers and practitioners in child welfare services in the United States--which examine the policy and practice issues related to false allegations of child abuse and neglect, this volume provides guideposts for further research and discussion. College and university students in child welfare and related programs, human service practitioners working in child protective and welfare services, and the larger public--both parents and professionals working with children--who have an interest in this important issue, will find Assessing Child Maltreatment Reports a compassionate approach to a sensitive issue.
In this readable book, Zvi Levy, Hadassim's Director, provides a careful account of how, over time, he and others have shaped a community to foster health, identity, and competence in distressed young people. Canadian WIZO (Women's International Zionist Organization) Hadassim is a thriving youth village in Israel that is home for 500 young people and a day educational program for an additional 1,000. Negotiating Positive Identity in a Residential Group Care Community illustrates the organizational expression of a developmental idea, in this case Erik Erikson's identity development theory, to show how an environment can be created to cope with disrupted development processes among children and adolescents. The book describes an ongoing experiment that started fifteen years ago and has since been recognized as an outstanding success. The basic information and ideas expressed by Levy can be used to improve the effectiveness of any framework through which adolescents pass during the stages of development, including schools, community centers, and normal families. Some of the main topics discussed in this volume are: principles for running a multicultural facility organization of the daily life of a large residential setting major parameters in a residential setting as derived from the theories of Erik Erikson on adolescence as a developmental stage comprehensive care for youth in transition and adolescents suffering from aggravated identity crises All child and youth care workers and program administrators can learn much from Levy's account of Hadassim. Negotiating Positive Identity in a Residential Group Care Community will be disturbing to many who adhere to the current tenets of good management and child care practice; readers need to be prepared to have many assumptions and beliefs challenged. The book emphasizes the distress of immigrant and troubled urban youth as an aggravated identity crisis, the cause of which needs to be treated before the symptom. This volume is of interest to theoreticians, practitioners, and policymakers in the fields of education, child and youth care, and developmental psychology, as well as scholars in Erikson's theories. It is also useful in courses which study education in Israel or that seek solutions to problems such as homeless youth in the Third World. Negotiating Positive Identity in a Residential Group Care Community stresses that: The answer to deprivation is not the provision of efficient services, but an environment and an approach that encourages adolescents to see themselves as active participants and not as patients or passive inmates. Residential settings for children and adolescents can successfully handle large numbers and, in fact, larger numbers can offer some definite advantages. The best way to help children develop into autonomous adults is to give them responsibility for their own choices within the framework of a goal-oriented community.
This analysis of direct care institutions focuses on the organization and culture of the institution, rather than its given psychological or educational approach. It features practical strategies for the organization of institutional settings, and suggests a scheme for quality of life.
A recognized leader in the professional development of the child and youth care field presents--in this single volume--a collection of his work related to group care work with children and youth. Henry Maier shares his observations about human development in the group care context, the perceptions of children and youth, the environments in which we work with them, the role of the worker, and the preparation of child and youth care workers. Dr. Maier’s practical approaches reflect the most recent research and thinking in human development. This book is a practical text for courses in the child and youth field, as well as a useful handbook for child and youth caseworkers already on the job. BACKCOVER COPY In what way can group care--non-familial living--assure children a developmental progress similar to that of children growing up within regular family care settings? In his practical new text, Henry Maier--one of the most vibrant, creative, and humane figures in child and youth care work today--answers that question for child care professionals using a developmental perspective in his approach to residential group care. He focuses on the developmental requirements of children and adolescents in relation to the care they receive while they are in no-familial, group living situations and also highlights training for the caregivers in order that they can effectively provide the kind of caring involvement that children and youth require. “The real contribution of this book . . . is that it cuts throught the confusion of competing values and competing points of view to focus on the care at the heart of child care work,” attests Richard W. Small, PhD, Executive Director of the Walker Home and School, Needham, Massachusetts (from the Preface).
At last, here is a compassionate, humane, and informative volume on the most unique and vulnerable group in our society today--homeless children. Homeless Children: The Watchers and the Waiters is unique because it offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the children and the enormously complicated causes of and solutions to their tragedy. The contributing authors discuss homeless children and the resolution of the problem, as well as the resulting policy and practice implications.From this single source of current research, policy, and practice information, you will better understand the circumstances of homelessness. You will also discover the impact of homelessness on children--the psychological effects on children’s development and behavior, the weakening of mother/child relationships, and the declining status of their physical health. Experts also describe the difficulties created by underfunded, poorly managed, and politically unpopular programs for homeless children, underscoring the need for a national policy to address the problem.Homeless Children: The Watchers and the Waiters is a thought-provoking and insightful book that must be read by professionals who work in human service agencies, sociologists, psychologists, health care workers, child care workers, teachers, and clergy. Policymakers, government officials, and child advocates must also read this masterful volume.
