1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910810311803321

Autore

Gelles Richard J.

Titolo

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

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, New York : , : Oxford University Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

0-19-061803-5

0-19-061802-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (201 pages)

Classificazione

SOC025000FAM004000

Disciplina

362.7068

Soggetti

Child welfare - Government policy - United States

Foster children - United States

Children - Services for - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Sommario/riassunto

" 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.  "--

"Despite 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 wellbeing of maltreated children. Out of Harm's Way presents four specific changes that would lead to a more effective system"--