Addressed to practitioners working with adoptive families, this book examines the question: How do professionals help children and families make transracial adoptions and foster care placements work? The book describes specific ways to ensure that children develop positive racial and cultural identities and how professionals can better serve…

Noting that child welfare professionals can improve the quality and integrity of the services they provide if they develop ethical decision making skills, this book provides child welfare administrators and caseworkers with a framework for assessing ethical dilemmas, making sound ethical decisions, and delivering services with integrity to…

A three-phase model for decision making at intake for both protective services and voluntary child welfare services is described in this manual. These phases include (1) reception, in which decisions are made as to whether a case seems appropriate for agency services; (2) investigation and problem assessment, which involves assessments regarding…

The rapid growth of kinship foster care--full-time parenting of children by relatives or other adults who have a kinship bond with a child--has caught many child welfare agencies off guard. This monograph presents information needed by professionals, agencies, institutions, communities, and organizations to develop and provide services to kinship…

Because a child witness' account is often the only source of information about an alleged incidence of sexual abuse, it becomes imperative to obtain an accurate account from the child so that justice may be achieved. This book provides information on children's linguistic ability in relation to videotaped interviews conducted since the…

Although the United States has seen a record influx of infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children into the foster care system in the past decade, there has not been an accompanying shift in policy or practice to attend to the developmental issues these younger children bring to child welfare. This textbook addresses the spectrum of child…

As babies, toddlers, and preschoolers spend more and more time in child care programs, those programs have an increasingly significant effect on their healthy social and emotional development. The impact and quality of caregivers' relationships with children contribute to the quality of young children's mental health. A mental health consultant…