The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which became law in 1997, elicited a major shift in federal policy and thinking toward child welfare, emphasizing children’s safety, permanency, and well-being over preserving their biological ties at all costs. The first edition of this volume was the earliest major social work textbook to map the field of child welfare after ASFA’s passage, detailing the practices, policies, programs, and research affected by the legislation’s new attitude toward care. This second edition highlights the continuously changing child welfare climate in the U.S., including content on the Fostering Connections Act of 2008. Gerald P. Mallon and Peg McCartt Hess have updated the text throughout, drawing from real world case examples, using data obtained from the national Child and Family Services Reviews and emerging empirically based practices. They have also added chapters addressing child welfare workforce issues, supervision, and research and evaluation. Divided into four sections—child and adolescent well-being, child and adolescent safety, permanency for children and adolescents, and systemic issues within services, policies, and programs—this newly edited volume provides a current understanding of family support and child protective services, risk assessment, substance and sexual abuse issues, domestic violence issues, guardianship, reunification, kinship and foster family care, adoption, and transitional living programs. Recognized scholars, practitioners, and policy makers also discuss meaningful engagement with families, particularly Latino families; health care for children and youth, including mental health care; effective practices with LGBT youth and their families; placement stability; foster parent recruitment and retention; and the challenges of working with immigrant children, youth, and families.

Currently, there are over 400,000 youth living in foster care in the United States, with over 20,000 aging out of the child welfare system each year. Foster youth are more prone to experience short- and long-term adverse developmental outcomes including diminished academic achievement and career opportunities, poor mental and overall health, financial struggles, homelessness, early sexual intercourse, and substance abuse, many of these outcomes are risk factors for involvement in the juvenile justice system. Despite their challenges, foster youth have numerous strengths and positive assets that carry them through their journeys, helping them to overcome obstacles and build resilience. The Handbook of Foster Youth brings together a prominent group of multidisciplinary experts to provide nuanced insights on the complex dynamics of the foster care system, its impact on youth’s lives, and the roles of institutions and policies in the foster system. It discusses current gaps and future directions as well as recommendations to advance the field. This book provides an opportunity to reflect on the many challenges and strengths of foster youth and the child welfare system, and the combined efforts of caregivers, community volunteers, policy makers, and the professionals and researchers who work with them.

Violence Against Children adopts in its title the exhortation of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, "Making Human Rights Real," which also represents the leitmotif of the book. It examines the prevalence of violence against children in Africa, the Asia Pacific Region, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and in the United States, and explores major ways of its prevention. Making human rights real engenders the challenge of helping all children to be free from violence and to lead a life replete with genuine nurture and the elimination of all violence. Only in this manner will the goal of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development —target 16.2—be achieved and the child as a rights-bearing individual realized in her/his fullness. The specially commissioned chapters that make up the volume have been written by renowned scholars, researchers and advocates. They coalesce to provide an overview of the challenges facing children exposed to violence worldwide, and they advance discussions of the measures which are available and necessary for the prevention of violence against children. The book is intended for policy-makers, researchers and students of the social sciences and human rights who are interested in ending all the widespread maltreatment of children in our societies and our time.