Children who receive child welfare services are a vulnerable group, and their numbers are growing. All who care about them need to be fully informed about current outcomes, indicators of success and failure, and best practices. This second edition of Child Welfare: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice has a special focus on Canadian child welfare and contains entirely new material on these important themes. The book highlights major developments in child welfare and shows how these inform directions taken in research, policy, and practice. The book includes new sections on Indigenous issues and best practices, and several of its chapters review efforts to increase supports for families in need. Contributions from new and international authors illustrate the endemic nature of child welfare challenges and how we can learn from these experiences. Contributors provide recommendations for promoting best practice and enhancing resilience among children and families. Closing chapters within each section and at the end of the book summarize key theoretical and practice issues along with recommendations to improve the research, policy, and practice continuum in child welfare. The challenge is to translate good research into policy and practice in ways that enhance the life chances of children who need our care and protection.

Published in 1999, Community Approaches to Child Welfare is written by both practitioners and academics to explore ways in which community-based, preventative approaches to child welfare can be used to support families experiencing behavioural problems with children or undergoing difficulties in raising them. Specific practice examples developed in Britain, Canada and Sweden provide an international dimension to this book. Comparing and contrasting developments within these countries reveal that there are both similarities in the methods adopted and difference in the ways in which these are applied. Common themes which appear across the stories that are presented include: the importance of ensuring cultural specificity to respond to identity issues and local traditions; the need to adhere to legislation that is country specific; the importance of dealing with some child welfare issues on an international basis, e.g. child abductions; and the importance of giving children the space within which to articulate their own 'voice.' Additionally, the book reveals how working with families from a community perspective which is centered in acknowledging children’s rights and parental rights may challenge professionals in ways that they find uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the book concludes that practice can more effectively serve children’s interests if parents and workers work in partnership with each other.

During the past decade, a remarkable transference of responsibility to Indigenous children’s organisation has taken place in many parts of Australia, Canada, the USA and New Zealand. It has been influenced by Indigenous peoples’ human rights advocacy at national and international levels, by claims to self-determination and by the globalisation of Indigenous children’s organisations. Thus far, this reform has taken place with little attention from academic and non-Indigenous communities; now, Decolonising Indigenous Child Welfare: Comparative Perspectives considers these developments and, evaluating law reform with respect to Indigenous child welfare, asks whether the pluralisation of responses to their welfare and well-being, within a cross-cultural post-colonial context, can improve the lives of Indigenous children. The legislative frameworks for the delivery of child welfare services to Indigenous children are assessed in terms of the degree of self-determination which they afford Indigenous communities. The book draws upon interdisciplinary research and the author’s experience collaborating with the peak Australian Indigenous children’s organisation for over a decade to provide a thorough examination of this international issue. Dr Terri Libesman is a Senior Lecturer in the Law Faculty, at the University of Technology Sydney. She has collaborated, researched and published for over a decade with the peak Australian Indigenous children’s organisation.

During the last decade there have been major advances in research in child welfare, the largest specialty within social work. The focus of this research has been on improving current child welfare practices and programs that protect children from abuse and neglect. The major policy and program changes in the child welfare system have been guided by these research studies, spurred by federal and state emphasis on monitoring child welfare outcomes and identifying best practices. This landmark collection gathers those research developments- and how they have been translated into policies, programs, and practice- in a single volume for the first time. Duncan Lindsey, one of the nation's foremost child welfare scholars, and Aron Shlonsky have assembled a case of the giants in the field who analyze developments in adoption, foster care, risk assessment, CPS work, welfare reform, poverty, decision making, and epidemiological studies. The final section of the book details new approaches to programs designed to combat child maltreatment and child poverty. This volume, with its unparalled breadth, depth, and up-to-date content, will define the state of the field and serve as an invaluable reference for child welfare scholars and practitioners alike.

In the second half of the nineteenth century a new kind of social and cultural actor came to the fore: the expert. During this period complex processes of modernization, industrialization, urbanization, and nation-building gained pace, particularly in Western Europe and North America. These processes created new forms of specialized expertise that grew in demand and became indispensible in fields like sanitation, incarceration, urban planning, and education. Often the expertise needed stemmed from problems at a local or regional level, but many transcended nation-state borders. Experts helped shape a new transnational sphere by creating communities that crossed borders and languages, sharing knowledge and resources through those new communities, and by participating in special events such as congresses and world fairs.