scholarly journals Working with LGBTQIA+ youth in the child welfare system: Perspectives from youth and professionals

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Young People ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Foster Families ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Supportive Environments ◽  
Meaningful Connections

Written through a constant exchange between LGBTQIA+ young people, researchers, professionals and foster families, this book offers a valuable tool to improve the practice with LGBTQIA+ youth at a personal, organizational, and policy levels. This book shows the powerful influence of relationships and networks for the LGBTQIA+ young person growing up in child protection and welfare systems. LGBTQIA+ youth need meaningful connections with individuals within their communities in order to be able to heal, learn, and be authentically themselves. Child welfare professionals have a crucial role in creating these connections and cultivating supportive environments, free of additional trauma, where LGBTQIA+ young people can feel valued and loved.

Racial Disproportionality and Disparities in the Child Welfare System: Why Do They Exist, and What Can Be Done to Address Them?

2020 ◽  
Vol 692 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-274
Author(s):  
Alan J. Dettlaff ◽  
Reiko Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Children Of Color ◽  
Racial Disproportionality ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
External Causes ◽  
Child Welfare Systems

Children of color are overrepresented in the child welfare system, and Black children have been most significantly impacted by this racial disproportionality. Racial disproportionality in child welfare exists because of influences that are both external to child welfare systems and part of the child welfare system. We summarize the causes of racial disproportionality, arguing that internal and external causes of disproportional involvement originate from a common underlying factor: structural and institutional racism that is both within child welfare systems and part of society at large. Further, we review options for addressing racial disproportionality, arguing that it needs to be rectified because of the harm it causes Black children and families and that forcible separation of children from their parents can no longer be viewed as an acceptable form of intervention for families in need.

Aftercare

2020 ◽  
pp. 299-311
Author(s):  
Kenneth McK. Norrie
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Local Authority ◽  
Young Person ◽  
Continuing Care ◽  
Formal Care ◽  
Children And Young People ◽  
Care Leavers ◽  
Industrial Schools ◽  
And Training

Aftercare, the duties owed to young people after they leave formal care, has always been an inherent aspect of the child protection process in Scotland, perhaps more so indeed in the early days when the assumption was that child protection necessitated the permanent removal of the child from the parent’s care. Early aftercare obligations were primarily around assistance in finding employment for young people when they reached school-leaving age, though managers of reformatory and industrial schools also had obligations to supervise the young person who had left their care for three years or until their 21st birthday. Latterly, education and training grants were made available, as were other forms of financial assistance. Finally, the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 imposed on local authority the obligation of “continuing care” towards young people who had previously been “looked after” by the local authority, and on a range of public bodies to act as “corporate parents” to such care leavers.

Instrumentation to Understand the Child Protective Services Decision-Making Processes

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-108
Author(s):  
Alan J. Dettlaff ◽  
Dana Hollinshead ◽  
Donald J. Baumann ◽  
John D. Fluke
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Protective Services ◽  
Improved Outcomes ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Child Welfare Outcomes

When children come to the attention of the child welfare system, they become involved in a decision-making process in which decisions are made that have a significant effect on their future and well-being. The decision to remove children from their families is particularly complex, yet surprisingly little is understood about this decision-making process. As a result, instrumentation has been developed and adapted over the past 20 years to further understand variations in child welfare outcomes that are decision-based and, in particular concerning the removal decision, in order to provide a more thorough understanding of the intersecting factors that influence caseworker decisions. This chapter presents research and the development and use of this instrument, drawing from the decision-making ecology as the underlying rationale for obtaining the measures. The instrument was based on the development of decision-making scales used in multiple studies and administered to child protection caseworkers in several states. This effort is part of a larger program of research that seeks to better understand decision-making processes in child welfare systems in order to promote fairness, accuracy, and improved outcomes among children and families.

scholarly journals Exploring dominant child protection discourses: new possibilities for practice

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nimo Samater
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Reflective Practice ◽  
Attachment Theory ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Child Protection Workers ◽  
Emerging Themes

This research study focuses on attachment theory as a dominant discourse in child protection and the experiences of child protection workers. The literature on attachment theory and its influence on Eurocentric/Western knowledge is reviewed. As well, the use of reflective practice in child protection practice is discussed. This study includes qualitative interviews with three child protection workers in Southern Ontario who discuss their practice. Four emerging themes were derived from the narratives of the participants: recognition of attachment theory as being the pinnacle of child protection practice, use of observation as a tool to assess attachment, use of reflective practice and lastly, the stigma of Children’s Aid Society and impacts on practice. The findings in this study suggest how practice is led by policies and standards of the child welfare system and is rarely challenged. The need for the child welfare system to validate parent/child beliefs, values and practices from various ethnicities is discussed.

Kelso, John Joseph

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Moscovitch
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
First Child ◽  
Protection Legislation ◽  
Children's Aid Societies ◽  
Similar Legislation

John Joseph Kelso (March 31, 1864–September 30, 1935) was a young journalist when he became involved in child welfare in his adopted home of Toronto. He was instrumental in the passage of the first child protection legislation in Canada, and in spreading the need for voluntary children’s aid societies across Ontario and for similar legislation across Canada. He became superintendent of child welfare in 1893 and remained in that post for 40 years, shaping the development of the child welfare system in Ontario and Canada.

Family experiences of care and protection services: the good, the bad and the hopeful

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-82
Author(s):  
Brid Featherstone ◽  
Anna Gupta ◽  
Kate Morris ◽  
Sue White
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Adoptive Parents ◽  
Family Experiences ◽  
Welfare Services ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Systems

This chapter explores the experiences of families enmeshed in child welfare systems. Stories of pain, hurt, betrayal, and violence are told to professionals everyday. However, a key theme of this book is a concern that the language and theoretical and practice tools available to them are impoverished and increasingly inadequate. This is partly due to the inadequacy of a model that translates need to risk routinely, colonises a variety of sorrows and troubles within a child protection frame, and has abandoned or lost a sense of the contexts — economic and social — in which so many are living lives of quiet desperation. The chapter draws on a number of studies conducted by the authors, in particular a detailed study of families and their experiences of welfare services; and an enquiry on the role of the social worker in adoption, ethics, and human rights, which looked at the perspectives of birth families, adoptive parents, and adopted young people.

scholarly journals Options for Africa’s Child Welfare Systems from Nigeria’s Unsustainable Multicultural Models

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1118
Author(s):  
Thomas Akintayo
Keyword(s):  
Child Welfare ◽  
Child Welfare System ◽  
Welfare System ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Response Options ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
Mind Maps ◽  
Child Welfare Systems

The sustainability of Africa’s existing child welfare systems remains uncertain, potentially owing to the maltreatment of children amid the competing worldviews of the continent’s indigenous and non-indigenous practices and international childcare models. This article focuses on Nigeria’s unsustainable multicultural child welfare system in order to highlight the inherent challenges of child welfare systems in Africa and proffer remedies. Seven discernible trends derived from available indigenous sources of information and scholarly literature on Nigeria are used as mind maps to describe and discuss Nigeria’s multicultural characteristics and childcare practices. From the discussion, the country’s child welfare challenges manifest in the following forms: ethnocultural, or more specifically, ethnoreligious diversity; the infiltration of Nigeria by non-native worldviews; colonial legacies; vacillating post-colonial social policies; conceptual ambiguities in non-indigenous welfare terminologies; and persistent unnecessary professional rivalries, which are also present in other African countries. As remedies, three transformative response options for the sustainability of the Nigerian child welfare system and those of other African countries are recommended: embracing cultural relativity regarding child maltreatment, leveraging the transformative and expanded mandates of the social work profession for the development of effective and sustainable child welfare systems, and using research and systems thinking as a driver for transforming professional rivalries into multidisciplinary approaches.

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