No Ordinary Life: Parenting the Sexually Abused Child and Adolescent was written for parents, caregivers, survivors of abuse, counselors, and therapists to understand the special needs of the population of sexually abused children. It will help caregivers especially to establish appropriate expectations and sexual boundaries of the young people in their care. This book includes topic-specific subjects such as identifying the signs of sexual abuse in children; what to do when abuse is suspected or disclosed; how to deal with eating disorders, self-mutilation, and acting out behaviors; and disciplining the abused child or adolescent. There are also chapters speaking directly to adult survivors of sexual abuse that deal with healing from past abuse, ways to break the family cycle of incest, and how to start a survivor's group. Sandra Knauer offers hopefulness for healing in families suffering with abuse issues and treating sexual abuse in a multigenerational setting.

* What are the consequences of fostering for children, their carers and their birth families? * What are the best ways of recruiting, retaining and supporting foster carers? * What are the most important elements of a successful placement? * Can foster care offer a permanent alternative to care at home? Fostering Now brings together authoritative research on foster care in the UK. It provides a succinct overview of a wide range of research projects and highlights the main implications for policymakers and all professionals involved in the fostering process. Drawing on the varied experiences and views of foster children, social workers, foster carers and parents, this book looks at how placement outcomes are influenced by factors such as foster carers' parenting styles, contact with the child's own parents, and the child's gender, ethnicity, age and physical and emotional health. Other important areas examined include care given by relatives, the effects of foster care on education, and what happens to foster children when they return home. Fostering Now identifies the most significant challenges currently faced by foster care and draws out the key messages for policy and practice. It offers important insights into the state of foster care today, and suggests how it can be improved in future. This book is essential reading for social workers, policy makers, academics and foster carers.

With the new federal mandate to double, by the year 2002, the number of children in foster care who are to be adopted or placed in permanent legal guardianships, it is essential for adoption agency staff and prospective families to learn which factors contribute to successful and unsuccessful placements. Dr. Ruth McRoy's informative guide, Special Needs Adoptions: Practice Issues outlines what formulates a successful match between adoptable children with special needs and their prospective parents, and how the current placements can be improved. Dr. McRoy recognizes the challenges of building families through adoptions and offers specific training suggestions for special needs adoptive families and agency workers in order to improve adoption outcomes for children. The book is based on a research project designed to identify special needs adoptions practice issues that contributed to intact, disruptive and dissolved adoptions by collecting data from adoption supervisors, post-adoption service providers, and actual case records of adoption placements. Based on the findings, the characteristics of children needing adoptive placement are described, practice issues such as matching children and parents are addressed, and transition planning is discussed. Further, controversial placement issues including foster parent adoptions, single parent adoptions, sibling placement and transracial adoptions are dealt with. Special Needs Adoptions is a rich, resourceful guide for all of the parties involved in a special need adoption: state and private adoption agency staff, post-adoption service providers, child welfare policy makers and researchers. Special Needs Adoptions is also a wonderful resource for adoptive parents or prospective parents considering special needs adoptions.

Title shows resumes and cover letters of people who wish to enter the social work field, advance in it, or exit from it into new careers. Job hunting strategies are discussed. There is also a section which shows how to transition out of social work into new fields and industries. There are more than 100 "real" resumes and cover letters shown which were used by real people to find occupations in the social work or counseling field, and the purpose of the book is to give models for people to use in creating their own resumes and cover letters tailored to social work and counseling. Included are resumes of case worker, counselor, human services counselor, victim advocate, youth services specialist, family services case worker, income maintenance counselor, and many others.

Perry Pezzot-Pearce and John Pearce guide practitioners through the steps of assessment, from negotiating the initial referral, through data collection and report writing to court testimony.

The second edition of this award-winning textbook has been thoroughly revised and updated throughout. Building on the success of the first edition, the book continues to address the History and Practice of Forensic Psychiatry, Legal Regulation of the Practice of Psychiatry, Psychiatry in relation to Civil Law, Criminal Law, and Family Law. Importan

Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men is an interdisciplinary examination of the myths, misconceptions, research, and practice literature related to sexual-minority individuals' efforts to adopt and raise children. It also provides a blueprint for research and professional training and highlights best practice standards for working with this group of adoptive parents.