This article discusses the Vietnamese refugee women's identity development. As the U.S. population diversifies, it behooves all professional counselors to increase their knowledge and understanding of multicultural populations. One population that has received little attention has been Vietnamese refugee women. The authors discuss Women's Identity…

Recent concerns regarding permanence for foster children have inspired child welfare agencies to re-focus more of their efforts on biological parents as permanent resources for children in care. The social work field has responded to this situation with family-focused training for frontline staff; one such curriculum is the Family Development…

Historically, the policy of deinstitutionalization has resulted in the closing of many federal and state mental health facilities. This has caused many criminal justice professionals and social workers to question where the mentally ill are placed when they are no longer in a treatment facility. With the abundance of offenders with mental health…

Although client satisfaction has long been an important form of program evaluation, one of the major limitations regarding client satisfaction studies has been the inability to provide concrete feedback for service providers. This study describes the use of a client-centered approach to developing a client satisfaction measure for a case…

Developed by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, this manual provides Child Protective Service (CPS) supervisors with a conceptual framework for practice and offers specific practice-oriented advice on how to effectively carry out supervisory functions. The manual focuses on building a foundation for effective service delivery, the…

The Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 was intended to increase the safety of children, promote adoption and other permanency options for children, and support fragile families. Although elements of ASFA were viewed as positive, child welfare administrators, practitioners, and researchers expressed concern that ASFA implementation could…

In the context of a national discussion regarding behavior management in child and youth care settings, and in an effort to address the need to care safely and appropriately for children and youth, the Child Welfare League of America (CWLA) formed the National Task Force on Behavior Management. The task force includes representatives of advocacy…

Noting that improving practice in all child welfare services is a major goal of the Child Welfare League of America, this handbook presents goals and standards for services to strengthen and preserve families with children. The handbook begins with introductory sections describing standards development, detailing how to use the standards, and…

Seventeen of the Child Well-Being Scales were used as measures of the physical and psychological care of children. Comparisons between neglectful families and low-income control families yielded predicted differences. Composite indices showed good internal consistency. Concurrent validity was supported. Scales reliably classified neglectful and…

Explains characteristics and behaviors of Native American parents who react to child protection services with extreme aggressiveness, passivity, or avoidance. Discusses appropriate behaviors for social workers to use with such parents. (BG)

French farms have to adapt quickly in an economic and social context that is in profound change. For this, advice procedures must themselves be reconsidered. The aim of this work was to characterize the advice practices in beef-cattle systems in Creuse and define farmers' and advisers' requirements according to future methods of providing advice.…

The main objective of this Handbook is to build the capacities of facilitators and other literacy and non-formal education personnel to promote learning and development at the community level. It aims at developing their skills and knowledge in literacy training, while sensitising them to issues that are at the very heart of adult literacy and…

As mentoring programs have proliferated, considerable variation in approaches to programmatic mentoring has emerged. Concomitant confusion exists about the context, structure, and goals that constitute mentoring as a distinct intervention. This article presents a brief summary of what is currently known about different approaches to mentoring and…

The Comprehensive Services Program of Palm Beach County, Florida, was an ambitious and innovative effort to improve the school readiness of low-income children in Palm Beach County by identifying needs early and providing early intervention services to support physical, cognitive, and emotional health and development. Services were delivered to…

This theme issue of "Focal Point" offers an overview of a range of children's mental health case management issues. Articles include: "Case Management for Families and Children" (Theresa J. Early); "Expectations of Case Management for Children with Emotional Problems: Parent Perspectives" (Richard Donner and others);…