How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children

For Better or for Worse?

Catherine Dulmus, Karen Sowers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780789024626
• eBook ISBN: 9781135426934
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Improve services for children and youth with new concepts, different perspectives, and up-to-date information!

How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children: For Better or for Worse? explores the positive and negative impacts of social institutions on child and adolescent well-being. Experts in the fields of social work and child welfare provide a broad perspective on how to improve outcomes for children and adolescents who receive institutional services either directly or indirectly. This book contains innovative strategies for reducing the negative outlook for children and families in shelters, foster homes, and residential treatment centers.

This book offers improvements for care services at such locations as:

• residential institutions
• state custody and foster homes
• schools
• youth development organizations
• urban public housing developments
• homeless shelters

In How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children, you'll discover current case studies that show how certain groupssuch as minorities and economically challenged children and familiesare stigmatized by the current child welfare system. You'll also find new evidence of the detrimental effects that can occur as a result of institutionalization and the need to find alternatives to removing children and adolescents from family-style environments. This book contains tables to clarify the findings of these case studies, references to further your reading, and detailed descriptions of plans and programs that you can implement in your own social work practice.

How Institutions are Shaping the Future of Our Children presents new ways to create positive environments for children and adolescents, including:

• strengths-based approaches to practice with children with severe emotional and behavioral disturbances
• custody planning for the children of HIV-infected women
• discipline-specific education for child protection caseworkers
• creating supportive staff-youth relationships within all institutions
• multiple family group interventions which help to strengthen homeless families in preparation to transition to permanent housing
• the School Development Program, Child Development Project, and Comprehensive Quality Programminginterventions for preventing school drop-outs
• Life Plans for post-institutionalized youth

Index

Abandoned children

adoptions, 198

Romania, 196

Absent fathers, adolescent development, 110

Acting out behavior, school violence, 175

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)

children, 57–66

housing assistance, 104

orphan children, 65

Administration for Children and Families, 21

Adolescent development

child welfare, 39

defining, 41

education, 43

foster care, 41–44

perspective, 41

sample and measures, 44

social influences, 42, 44

study and results, 44–49

Adolescents

absent fathers, 110

African-American, 101

behavior, 116–122

conduct disorder, 109

data collection, 112, 115

education, 116–122

literature review, 107–112

mental health, 121

monitoring, 119

neighborhoods, 113

physical health, 121

public housing, 101

school performance, 108

sibling abuse, 71

social support, 107–109

stress scores, 122

study and results, 112–122

supervision, 119

see also Youth

Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, 21

Adoption and Safe Families Act (1997), 40

Adoptions

international, 198

minority children, 21, 31

Advocacy programs, residential treatment, 160

Affordable housing, homeless families, 130

African-American children

adolescents, 101

age and gender, 114

arrest and detention, 24–26

behavior, 116–122

data collection, 112, 115

drug addiction, 61

education, 116–122

foster care, 63

juvenile justice, 22

kinship care, 61

literature review, 107–112

neighborhoods, 113

poverty levels, 109

public housing, 101

study and results, 112–122

Aggressive behavior

school victimization, 171

sheltered children, 131

Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 111

American Indians, juvenile justice, 22

Am...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ABOUT THE EDITORS
• Introduction
• Emphasizing Caregiver Strengths to Avoid Out-of-Home Placement of Children with Severe Emotional and Behavioral Disturbances
• Benevolent Intervention or Oppression Perpetuated: Minority Overrepresentation in Children’s Services
• Developmental Outcomes of Vulnerable Youth in the Child Welfare System
• Permanency Planning for HIV/AIDS Affected Children: Options for Care
• The Relationship of Child Protection Service Caseworker Discipline-Specific Education and Definition of Sibling Abuse: An Institutional Hiring Impact Study
• Institutions of Youth Development: The Significance of Supportive Staff-Youth Relationships
• Navigating the Concrete Jungle: African American Children and Adolescents in Urban Public Housing Developments
• A Community-Based Multiple Family Group Intervention for Sheltered Families: Impact of the Weekend Retreat
• Using Family-Oriented Treatment to Improve Placement Outcomes for Children and Youth in Residential Treatment
• How School Environments Contribute to Violent Behavior in Youth
• Student-Teacher Relationships: An Overlooked Factor in School Dropout
• Life Plans: A Critical Component in the Rehabilitation of Post-Institutionalized Romanian Youth
• Index