Search Results for Wellbeing - Narrowed by: POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Security.

Babies and young children in care : life pathways, decision-making and practice / Harriet Ward, Emily R. Munro and Chris Dearden.

2024-05-15T06:08:36Z

by Ward, Harriet, 1948-
Call Number 362.73208320941 22
Publication Date 2006
Summary Babies and very young children in care often experience several changes of placement and carer, which can have a negative impact upon their long-term ability to develop secure attachments. "Babies and Young Children in Care" examines why babies enter care or accommodation and why securing their long-term future can be a lengthy process. It analyses the circumstances, characteristics and experiences of these young children before, during and after being looked after, including reasons for changes of carer and placement disruptions. It looks at how young children are affected by the lack of stability in their lives, and explore the consequences of reunification with their parents after long periods in care. Drawing on interviews with birth parents, carers and social care professionals, the authors trace the complex decision-making process that influences these children's early experiences and the impact this has on their later development and well-being. They offer a clear explanation of the outcomes of services for very young children and signpost messages for practice. This book is a key text for researchers, practitioners, policy makers and social care managers.
Format: Electronic Resources
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=167091

Family foster care in the next century / Kathy Barbell and Lois Wright, editors.

2024-05-15T06:08:36Z

by Barbell, Kathy, editor.
Call Number 362.7330973 23
Publication Date 2017 2001
Summary Family foster care is supposed to provide temporary protection and nurturing for children experiencing maltreatment. Although it has long been a critical service for millions of children in the United States, the increased attention given to this service in the last two decades has focused more on its inability to achieve its intended outcomes than on its successes. However, as social and political trends and new legislation reshape child welfare, policymakers and service providers continue to offer innovative policy and practice options for this child welfare service. Though use of the service has changed, family foster care remains important. Responding to a widespread sense of the "drifting" of children in care, Congress passed the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare ACt of 1980. This legislation became a key factor shaping the current status of family foster care. Its goal was to reduce reliance on out-of-home care and encourage use of preventative and reunification services; it also mandated that agencies engage in planning efforts for permanent solutions for foster children. Yet despite federal mandates and funding, the child welfare system has continued to struggle to provide the level of services needed for children to reduce the amount of time children remain in temporary foster care. The latest response to these problems, the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, established unequivocally that safety, permanency, and well-being were national goals for children in the child welfare system. To comply with the law, public and private agencies are required to initiate significant program and practice changes in the coming years to improve permanency outcomes and child well-being in family foster care. The central theme of the volume is accountability for outcomes, certainly a current driving force in child welfare as well as in other public and private service fields."--Back of book
Format: Electronic Resources
http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?url=http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1692853

Towards Belonging : Negotiating New Relationships for Adopted Children and Those in Care / edited by Andrew Briggs ; foreword by John Simmonds.

2024-05-15T06:08:36Z

by Briggs, Andrew, editor.
Call Number 362.734
Publication Date 2015
Summary This book includes contributions from a wide range of interested observers and practitioners in the field of children in care and adoption, focusing on a core aspect of their emotional well-being and mental health. It focuses in particular on psychoanalytic, systemic and attachment theory approaches to the question of 'belonging': can these children allow themselves to belong to their new families, and also can these new families allow themselves to belong to these children? Highly innovative clinical work with these children in various settings is discussed alongside chapters that provide thought-provoking commentaries from practitioners surveying the often extremely disturbing societal and systemic landscape for the emotional lives of these children. The book is written to be accessible to clinicians, practitioners, researchers, policy advisors and students of all disciplines who have an interest in or brief to work with fostered and adopted children. It is hoped that the book will be used for teaching purposes on courses qualifying professionals across the child development, mental health and social care spectrum.
Format: Electronic Resources
http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?url=http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=972416

Broken : institutions, families, and the construction of intellectual disability / Madeline C. Burghardt.

2024-05-15T06:08:36Z

by Burghardt, Madeline C., 1964- author.
Call Number 362.309713 23
Publication Date 2018
Summary "After 133 years of operation, the 2009 closure of Ontario's government-run institutions for people with intellectual disabilities has allowed accounts of those affected to emerge. In Broken, Madeline Burghardt draws from narratives of institutional survivors, their siblings, and their parents to examine the far-reaching consequences of institutionalization due to intellectual difference. Beginning with a thorough history of the rise of institutions as a system to manage difference, Broken provides an overview of the development of institutions in Ontario and examines the socio-political conditions leading to families' decisions to institutionalize their children. Through this exploration, other themes emerge, including the historical and arbitrary construction of intellectual disability and the resulting segregation of those considered a threat to the well-being of the family and the populace; the overlap between institutionalization and the workings of capitalism; and contemporaneous practices of segregation in Canadian history, such as Indian residential schools. Drawing from people's direct, lived experiences, the second half of the book gathers poignant accounts of institutionalization's cascading effects on family relationships and understandings of disability, ranging from stories of personal loss and confusion to family breakage. Adding to a growing body of work addressing Canada's treatment of historically marginalized peoples, Broken exposes the consequences of policy based on socio-political constructions of disability and difference, and of the fundamentally unjust premise of institutionalization."-- An exploration of the impact of institutionalization in the lives of Canadian families.
Format: Electronic Resources
http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?url=http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1984560

Out of harm's way : creating an effective child welfare system / Richard J. Gelles.

2024-05-15T06:08:36Z

by Gelles, Richard J., author.
Call Number 362.7068 23
Publication Date 2017
Summary "Despite many well-intentioned efforts to create, revise, reform, and establish an effective child welfare system in the United States, the system continues to fail to ensure the safety and well-being of maltreated children. Out of Harm's Way explores the following four critical aspects of the system and presents a specific change in each that would lead to lasting improvements. - Deciding who is the client. Child welfare systems attempt to balance the needs of the child and those of the parents, often failing both. Clearly answering this question is the most important, yet unaddressed, issue facing the child welfare system. - Decisions. The key task for a caseworker is not to provide services but to make decisions regarding child abuse and neglect, case goals, and placement; however, practitioners have only the crudest tools at their disposal when making what are literally life and death decisions. - The Perverse Incentive. Billions of dollars are spent each year to place and maintain children in out-of-home care. Foster care is meant to be short-term, yet the existing federal funding serves as a perverse incentive to keep children in out-of-home placements. - Aging out. More than 20,000 youth age out of the foster care system each year, and yet what the system calls "emancipation" could more accurately be viewed as child neglect. After having spent months, years, or longer moving from placement to placement, aging-out youth are suddenly thrust into homelessness, unemployment, welfare, and oppressive disadvantage. The chapters in this book offer a blueprint for reform that eschews the tired cycle of a tragedy followed by outrage and calls for more money, staff, training, and lawsuits that provide, at best, fleeting relief as a new complacency slowly sets in until the cycle repeats. If we want, instead, to try something else, the changes that Gelles outlines in this book are affordable, scalable, and proven."--Provided by publisher.
Format: Electronic Resources
http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?url=http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1435304

Supporting Older People Using Attachment-Informed and Strengths-Based Approaches.

2024-05-15T06:08:36Z

by Guthrie, Lydia.
Call Number 362.6 23
Publication Date 2018
Summary The first practical guide to cover the basics of attachment theory and how it can be applied to improve the wellbeing of older adults in care. The Care Act 2014 proposed a radical shift to a preventative, strengths-based approach to social care, and this book includes tools for frontline health and care workers to adapt this policy into practice.
Format: Electronic Resources
http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?url=http://ezproxy.angliss.edu.au/login?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1724563