Young Children's Rights and Public Policy: Practices and Possibilities for Citizenship in the Early Years

There is a growing belief that young children should be involved in decisions that affect them. This belief has its foundations in a new model of the young child, in a new concern with young children's rights as citizens and in new knowledge about the significance of young children's early experiences. This article examines the increasing interest in involving young children in policy‐making and its rationale. It then presents two case studies from Australia of consulting young children in policy‐making, to show what consulting young children can offer children, policy‐makers and the wider community.     

Children's Career Development: Metaphorical Images of Theory,Research, and Practice

This summative article discusses 5 invited contributions on children's career development. The authors of these articles were asked to consider the status quo of children's career development, issues facing this field, and future directions. Several emergent themes focused on theory, research, and practice and their interactive potential in children's career development. Suggestions for future direction in the study of children's career development include the need for greater contextualization and interdisciplinary collaboration, the revision and innovation of theory, and the need for organizing frameworks for theory, research, and practice.     

Research,A Basic Ingredient in the Study of Social Policy and Social Services

The course model described in this paper has four components: first, a systems base for understanding family structure, including intergenerational themes, taboos, toxic issues, triangulated relationships, and attitudes toward ethnic or racial heritage; second, utilization of research skills, including cataloging sources, constructing topical and autobiographical interviews and questionnaires, determining credibility of sources, and assessing style and form as well as content of correspondence; third, structural adaptations that students' families made over three generations in response to immigration, natural disasters, military mobilization, economic depression, long-distance relocations, and discriminatory actions; and fourth, public review of each student's research, elaborating on the similarities and differences in the experiences of each ethnic or racial group and in the structural accommodations of family systems to these experiences.     

台湾地区儿少保护服务的政策、实务与启示

我国台湾地区的儿少保护工作积累了较为丰富的经验.其政策的发展经历了一个从无到有,从有到健全,再到精进的过程;在实务中逐渐形成儿少保护的三级预防体系和一套完整的操作流程.总结台湾地区的儿少保护体系,其呈现的特点有:行政当局主导,民间协力;全民参与,多元通报;依托社工,专业服务;倚重量表,专业决策;家庭为中心,注重预防.大陆可以借鉴台湾地区的儿少保护工作经验,进一步发展儿童保护法律体系、完善服务输送体系,以及建立全社会参与的儿童侵害举报机制.     

Understanding Men's Health and Illness: A Gender-relations Approach to Policy,Research, and Practice

Abstract

Men's health has emerged as an important public concern that may require new kinds of healthcare interventions and increased resources. Considerable uncertainty and confusion surround prevailing understandings of men's health, particularly those generated by media debate and public policy, and health research has often operated on oversimplified assumptions about men and masculinity. A more useful way of understanding men's health is to adopt a gender-relations approach. This means examining health concerns in the context of men's and women's interactions with each other, and their positions in the larger, multidimensional structure of gender relations. Such an approach raises the issue of differences among men, which is a key issue in recent research on masculinity and an important health issue. The gender-relations approach offers new ways of addressing practical issues of healthcare for men in college environments.     

Family Policy and Complex Contemporary Families: A Decade in Review and Implications for the Next Decade of Research and Policy Practice

Prior Journal of Marriage and Family decade-in-review articles have grappled with the definition and role of family policy for research and policy practice while emphasizing its value to both. In this article, we begin with a broad conceptualization of family policy that encompasses actions intended to achieve explicitly stated goals for families (explicit policies) and those that affect families without an explicitly stated goal for doing so (implicit policies), which we believe provides a solid framework for guiding and understanding both research and practice in the field. Second, we review major U.S. policy initiatives in the past decade and their documented and potential effects on families. Third, we describe several key aspects by which contemporary families have become more diverse and complex. Fourth, we discuss the implications of ongoing family complexity for public policies. We conclude with a discussion about future research and policy development in the context of contemporary family complexity.     

Homelessness and Children's Use of Mental Health Services: A Population-Based Study

This study examined whether children who become homeless differ from other low-income children in their mental health service use before and after their first homeless episode, and to what extent homelessness is associated with an increased likelihood of mental health service use. Differences between children with and without new onset of sheltered homelessness in the use of mental health services emerged following homelessness and widened over time. Sheltered homelessness and foster care placement history were associated with increased odds of receiving inpatient and ambulatory mental health services. Findings underscore the importance of collaborations between homeless assistance, foster care, and mental healthcare in efforts to mitigate family homelessness and collateral needs among homeless children.     

Deprivation and Child Abuse: Implications for Strategic Planning in Children's Services

SUMMARY. The paper reviews the association between material deprivation and child abuse and considers the implications of the association for preventive strategies. The authors conclude that community-wide strategies aimed at supporting all child carers are more likely to succeed in preventing child abuse than those based on identification of high risk' groups. Common elements of successful community-wide strategies are presented as are the implications for child protection policy making.