Child Welfare Services

Abstract

This paper highlights the problem of children being at risk for placement by public child welfare systems into substitute care. It focuses on one state, Illinois, which has had considerable success in reducing its caseload. Risk factors are hypothesized. It presents research involving regression analysis of data for the city of Chicago. A cross-sectional design is utilized for a division of the city into nine regions. Results indicate that children being wards of the state is impacted significantly by demographics (being African-American) and teen-age pregnancy. The effects of poverty were not as hypothesized. Further research is required.     

Child Welfare Services in Russia

SUMMARY: This is an account of a visit to Moscow in May 1994 to assess the possibilities for collaboration in developing child welfare services in Russia. The authors argue that the present situation is a critical one for millions of children, and that there is an urgent need for practical and theoretical assistance from Britain.     

Marketing of Voluntary Organizations as Contract Providers of National and Local Government Welfare Services in the UK

Voluntary organisations have become major providers of numerous social welfare services that previously were supplied by the state. In Britain, between 35 and 40% of the average human services charity’s annual income now derives from government (predominantly local government) sources, meaning that the acquisition of fresh contracts to undertake government funded work, in conjunction with the maintenance of good relations with government funders vis-à-vis current assignments, is increasingly important for ensuring a human service charity’s financial survival. An organization that wishes to obtain new contracts and to keep government bodies satisfied with its present activities will need to market itself effectively. This empirical study examined two aspects of charity marketing relevant to this requirement: the extent to which voluntary organizations applied the principles of strategic account management (otherwise known as key account management) to their relations with government funders, and the organizational characteristics (passion and commitment, low wage costs, etc.) that they emphasized to government bodies when making bids. A number of organizational variables (e.g., mission rigidity, strategic intent, short term operational focus) were employed in regression analyses as possible determinants of: (i) the degree to which a charity used strategic account management; and (ii) the genres of the organizational characteristics that it accentuated when tendering for government funded work.

青年公益的实践向度

青年公益包含了价值导向、行动取向、发展指向、社区走向和成果定向五个基本实践向度。其中,价值定向分为社会价值和个人价值两大层面,涵盖服务、融合与成长等内容;行动取向则要求志愿者量力而行、相机而动、合作互助;发展指向涵盖了以特长为基础的优势发展、以关系为纽带的协调发展、以能力为根本的持续发展;社区走向是指青年公益应扎根社区、深度服务、激发参与;成果定向需要在创造社会资本、实现服务创新和开展效益评估方面下功夫。     

Assessment of Intimate Partner Violence by Child Welfare Services

The purpose of this study was to describe policy and practice with respect to the assessment of intimate partner violence in a sample of child welfare agencies located throughout the United States and to examine the relationship of contextual characteristics and assessment practices. Telephone interviews were conducted with key informants from child welfare agencies. A snowball interviewing strategy was used to identify the best informant in each agency. Almost all of the participating agencies conducted some assessment of intimate partner violence, with most reporting that the majority of screening or assessment occurred during investigation of referrals. However, only 43.1% reported that all of the families referred to the child welfare system were assessed for intimate partner violence, and 52.8% indicated they had a written policy pertaining to screening and assessment of the problem. There was little relationship between county or agency characteristics and assessment practices. Additional research is needed to determine factors that influence assessment practices and to identify strategies to support and extend efforts to identify intimate partner violence and provide appropriate services for families in the child welfare system.     

Issues of Risk Practice and Welfare in Learning Disability Services

This article focuses on risk management in services for people with learning disabilities. It identifies the issue of risk as central to many historical and current care practices. It illustrates this through three examples that raise questions of risk in relationship to people with learning disabilities: on community care, alcohol and sexuality. It concludes that risk has often been negatively associated with danger, but that sensitive risk management has the potential to improve or maintain the quality of care services.     

From Prevention to Partnership: Child Welfare Services Across Three Decades

SUMMARY. Throughout the lifetime of the NCB there have been significant changes of emphasis and direction in child welfare services in Britain, which are often reflected in the Bureau's own history. The priority given to the related spheres of child-care, child protection, delinquency control and preventive work with vulnerable families has shifted over the three decades and changed priorities have contributed to a changing service ethos. The new Children Act aims at balance and a fresh synthesis, centred on partnership; a concept which promises much but has yet to be fully tried and tested.     

Staff Development in Public Welfare Agencies

This article describes a teaching-learning model that utilizes videotaped segments along with instructional modules and telegraphic prose to teach students the knowledge, values, and skills necessary to function effectively in a health-related clinic setting. The intent is to facilitate the orderly and rapid absorption of the biomedical, genetic content along with the social work practice skills to assist students to function as members of interdisciplinary teams. Its utilitarian capacity makes it adaptable in a variety of field placement settings. It utilizes actual interviews in which staff persons serve as models for the various practice skills described in the instructional unit.     

A State-in-Society Approach to the Nonprofit Sector: Welfare Services in Japan

This article uses the case of Japan to advocate for a new theoretical approach to the study of the nonprofit sector. In particular, it examines how theoretical models based on the European and North American experiences have difficulty explaining the relationship between the nonprofit sector and the state in Japan, and argues that a state-in-society approach is better suited to explaining complex state–society relations in diverse cultural contexts. It does this by examining the evolution of social welfare service provision in Japan. This article is motivated to explain an apparent paradox: Japan’s recent efforts toward greater government decentralization and privatization of services have empowered and enlarged the nonprofit sector even as they have also expanded the scope of state authority and enhanced its legitimacy.     

青年公益事业的发展与创新

在社会转型过程中,社会分化是青年公益事业发展的外部条件.在政府和市场之外逐渐形成的第三领域为青年公益事业的发展提供了新的发展空间。多元化的需求和青年群体的参与促进了青年公益事业的发展。但是,目前青年公益事业仍然面临着制度困境、资金困境和人才困境。通过社会创新、完善的制度设计、建构多元的融资机制以及公益组织的自我完善等途径可以有效促进青年公益事业的发展。鼓励和发挥大学生的自我教育,树立"四位一体"的消费观教育体系,是考量"90后"大学生消费观教育的现实路径选择。     

Integrated Substance Abuse and Child Welfare Services for Women: A Progress Review

A review of empirical literature reveals improvements in service utilization and outcomes for women when substance abuse and child welfare services are integrated. The increased use of substances by women involved in the child welfare system has resulted in a call for integrated, coordinated, evidence-based practices. Since the late 1990s, specific system- and service-level strategies have been developed to coordinate and integrate the provision of substance abuse and child welfare services such that women are remaining in treatment longer and are more likely to reduce substance use and be reunited with their children. The strategies reviewed provide useful guidelines for developing components of effective, evidence-based programs for substance-involved women in the child welfare system.     

Caregivers' Endorsement of Barriers to Mental Health Services for Children and Youth in Child Welfare

The purpose of this study was to examine the three most common types of caregivers in the child welfare system (birth parents, relative caregivers, and foster parents), an active child welfare case, caregivers' endorsement of barriers to mental health services and mental health service use by caregivers for the children under their care. The sample consisted of 430 dyads (caregivers and their children). Results indicate that an active child welfare case, provider characteristics, and accessibility of services predicted mental health service use for children. Implications for the child welfare and mental health systems are discussed.     

Searching for Local Solutions: Making Welfare Policy on the Ground in Ontario

Over recent decades welfare dependency has played a powerful role in defining the welfare “problem” and in passing appropriate “solutions.” One result has been the proliferation of short-term, low-cost employment programs and training programs that have emerged as critical sites for challenging and reforming the attitudes and behaviors of welfare recipients. By exploring work-readiness programs in four communities in Ontario, Canada, we provide insight into how these programs relate to the lived realities of those compelled to attend them. The research shows how dependency discourse informs program rules and content, raising expectations about both the benefits and the immediacy of work. This focus risks individualizing blame and ignoring the structural realities of labor markets and the systemic forces that create poverty and unemployment. Although the particular empirical focus is on Ontario, the approaches used and their outcomes resonate with strategies that are evident wherever neoliberalism has made its mark.     

Contemporary discourses on children and parenting in Norway: Norwegian Child Welfare Services meets immigrant families

Discourses on children and what is considered to be proper parenting have been accentuated by the processes of globalization. In Norway, we study current discourses on children and parenting, based on a particular case: Norwegian Child Welfare Services' interaction with and intervention in immigrant families with children. We use a discursive analytical framework to analyse a sample of 80 newspaper texts, reflecting on and debating this allegedly problematic meeting. The texts are derived from regional and country-wide Norwegian newspapers in the period 1 January 2011 to 30 April 2013. Distinct discourses located in the texts concerned: (1) No-tolerance for parenting practices implying violence and force; (2) Every child is a subject of individual – and equal – rights; (3) Good parenting is child-focused and dialogue based and (4) Norwegian Child Welfare Services – authoritative as well as contentious in family matters. The discourses indicate the presence of two important subject positions, first, the child as the pivot. This implies that children are given a superior moral status, and are to enjoy human dignity and values such as individuality, equality and justice, individual rights and an obligation for the state to oversee and ensure this position also for the child. The other important subject position concerns parents as guarantors for children developing proper skills. This compels processes toward standardization and homogenization of parenting which positions some groups of parents as deficient.     

IT and Knowledge Development in Human Services

ABSTRACT

The role of computers in knowledge developments is explored from two perspectives: the computer as a tool to enhance knowledge development and the computer as a major influence or paradigm affecting the nature and structure of knowledge development. As a tool_s the computer is without precedence, continually transforming to meet current and future knowledge needs. Examples of this are provided. As a paradigm, the computer will support the positivistic development of knowledge, emphasizing structure, taxonomies and operational definitions. Computers, however, also offer the potential to develop knowledge through other, more exploratory, creative and intuitive ways. In summary, computers will respond to meet the challenge of pluralism in knowledge development and our many ways of knowing.