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Child Welfare Social Work
Philip R. Popple, University of Texas, Arlington
Francine Vecchiolla, Springfield College, Massachusetts

ISBN-10: 0205274900
ISBN-13:  9780205274901

Publisher:  Pearson
Copyright:  2007
Format:  Paper; 312 pp
Published:  12/13/2005
Status: Instock


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Description

Child Welfare Social Work is a brief, introductory text for child welfare courses covering the most important policy and practice issues.

 

At the current time, child welfare social work is, in the words of businesspeople, a “growth industry.” After a number of years of deprofessionalizing child welfare via the declassification of social work positions in child welfare agencies, these agencies are turning to schools of social work with pleas for help. 

 

There are a number of reasons for the renewed interest of child welfare agencies in professionally trained personnel. The first is the explosive growth in abuse and neglect referrals over recent decades, with the accompanying increases in caseload sizes, foster home placements, and demand for preventive services–all combining to create a need for better-trained staff. Another factor is the number of legal challenges that have been filed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union’s Children’s Rights Project, which have, in every case, resulted in court orders to improve services.  One of the components of the directives to improve services has generally been to upgrade the professional qualifications of child welfare staff. Finally, most large city newspapers now have a reporter assigned to the child welfare beat, which means agency problems are quickly subjected to public scrutiny, with the result that mistakes are nearly always accompanied by cries for better-trained staff. 

 

Schools of social work, for their part, have finally begun to recognize that child welfare is a central concern and responsibility of the social work profession.  Strangely, this has not always been the case. Until fairly recently, the child welfare agency was viewed by schools of social work as a place where truly professional social work practice was difficult, if not impossible, and a job in such an agency was seen as a stop gap for any graduate–to be taken only until a job in a mental health agency opened up. Fortunately, beginning with the NEW Partnership initiatives that began in the 1970s and continuing on to the federally funded Title IVE child welfare education collaboratives, this is no longer the case. Education for child welfare practice is now a central concern of virtually every undergraduate department and graduate school of social work in the United States. 

 

This increased emphasis on child welfare by social work education has been accompanied by the need for up-to-date, relevant, user-friendly educational materials.  For this reason the authors have written Child Welfare Social Work: An Introduction to help meet that need.


Features

  • Brief (approx. 300 pages) and organized into twelve chapters that roughly follow the twelve weeks in a semester, the text provides reasonable reading requirements for students.
  • A strong risk assessment chapter (Ch. 4) covers one of the key current issues in child welfare practice, including discussion of false positives and negatives and review of research in the subject area.
  • An excellent chapter on the child welfare worker (Ch. 10) based on the ethnography of a child welfare   office gives students an actual feel for the job of a child welfare social worker.
  • Excellent coverage of therapeutic foster care (Ch. 8) including discussion of the reunification decision, termination of parental rights, and the ramifications for children.  The increasing number of foster care placements makes this a key issue in child welfare social work.
  • Exceptional coverage of inter-professional issues (Ch. 11) includes discussion of the role of judges, attorneys, guardians, special advocates, probation officers, etc.
  • Frequent cases and vignettes throughout the text help students relate to the “stories” of each specific example.
  • A strong history chapter (Ch. 2), including recent developments, provides a fundamental understanding of the field that the child welfare social worker cannot enter the field without.


Table of Contents

  1. Child Welfare as a Field of Social Work and Public Policy.
  2. Child Welfare in America: A Brief History.
  3. Families and Children Served by Child Welfare Agencies.
  4. Risk Factors and Risk Assessment in Child Welfare.
  5. Assessing and Intervening with Families.
  6. Universal Services for Children.
  7. Services to Families and Children at Home.
  8. Services to Families and Children with the Children in Substitute Care.
  9. Services for Children Who Cannot Go Home.
  10. Doing Child Welfare.
  11. Other Key Players in the Child Welfare System.
  12. Concluding Thoughts on the Practice of Child Welfare.



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Child Welfare Social Work: An Introduction, 1/e

Overview:

Child Welfare Social Work is a brief, introductory text for child welfare courses that covers the most important policy and practice issues.


Features:

  • A strong risk assessment chapter (Chapter 4) covers one of the key current issues in child welfare practice, including discussion of false positives and negatives and review of research in the subject area.
  • A chapter on doing child welfare (Chapter 10) based on the ethnography of a child welfare office gives students an actual feel for the job of a child welfare social worker.
  • Coverage of therapeutic foster care (Chapter 8) includes discussion of the reunification decision and termination of parental rights, as well as the ramifications of each for children.
  • Exceptional coverage of inter-professional issues (Chapter 11) includes discussion of the role of judges, attorneys, guardians, special advocates, probation officers, and others.
  • Frequent cases and vignettes throughout the text help students relate to the “stories” of each specific example.
  • A strong history chapter (Chapter 2) provides a solid background of the field that is essential for any child welfare social worker.


What Reviewers Are Saying…

“I consider the strengths of this book to be its readability, practical vignettes and the comprehensive nature of the information presented. I also like the use of case examples … used throughout that describe common, real-world situations. I will adopt this text for my course.”

—Patricia Burke, University of Texas-Arlington

“Overall, I am impressed with this text; I particularly like the emphasis on the systems approach throughout. It is much more practical than the text I am currently using and really focuses on the reality of working with children. Chapter 4 on risk assessment in child welfare was the strength of this text and I might adopt it based solely on this chapter”.

—Sandy Cook-Fong, University of Nebraska

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