Contains essays in which the authors describe the problem of achieving permanence in foster care for older children and youth, and examine policy responses to the permanency needs of youth.

What happens to looked-after children in the longer term? This book analyses the outcomes of a large-scale study of foster children in the UK. It includes individual case studies and draws extensively on the views of foster children themselves. The authors examine: Why children remain fostered or move to different settings (adoption, residential care, their own families or independent living) How the children fare in these different settings and why What the children feel about what happens to them. Other important issues covered include the support given to birth families to enable children to return home, the experience of adopters, the ways in which foster care can become more permanent and the experiences of young people in independent living. In bringing together these results the book provides a wealth of findings, many of them new and challenging. It offers positive and practical recommendations and will be an enduring resource for practitioners, academics, policy makers, trainers, managers and all those concerned with the well-being of looked-after children.

Since the beginnings of its development in Britain in 1987, the Looking After Children (LAC) initiative has had a profound influence in Canada-as well as in Australia and across Europe-in sharpening the developmental focus and improving the quality of services for children and adolescents who, because of abuse, neglect, extreme poverty, or other circumstances, live in out-of-home care. Promoting Resilience in Child Welfare presents reviews of research, new empirical findings, and useful practice and policy suggestions derived from the perspectives of LAC and resilience theory by an array of international voices. Practitioners, out-of-home care providers, youths in care, in-service trainers, students, researchers, and many others will find much in this book that speaks to more effective ways of improving the lives of young people being looked after in out-of-home care. (Midwest).

In Intimate Diversity Paul Smith explores the question, 'What grace can be found in the gift of interreligious marriage?' He investigates the experience of interfaith couples for theological themes and from a mssional standpoint.