Racial Disproportionality and Disparities in the Child Welfare System

Racial Disproportionality and Disparities in the Child Welfare System
Author: Alan J. Dettlaff
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2020-11-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030543145

This volume examines existing research documenting racial disproportionality and disparities in child welfare systems, the underlying factors that contribute to these phenomena and the harms that result at both the individual and community levels. It reviews multiple forms of interventions designed to prevent and reduce disproportionality, particularly in states and jurisdictions that have seen meaningful change. With contributions from authorities and leaders in the field, this volume serves as the authoritative volume on the complex issue of child maltreatment and child welfare. It offers a central source of information for students and practitioners who are seeking understanding on how structural and institutional racism can be addressed in public systems.

Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare

Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare
Author: Marian Sabrina Harris
Publisher:
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2014
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780231150460

The number of children of color entering the child welfare system in the United States is disproportionately high. This is especially true among African-American children, who, though they comprise 15% of children in the U.S., account for 37% of the total children placed in foster care. The numbers are also high for Native American and Latino children. Not only are children of color removed from parental custody and placed in care more often than their white counterparts, but they also remain in care longer, receive fewer services, and have less contact with the caseworkers assigned to them. This book identifies the practice and policy changes required to successfully address the unequal treatment of children of color in the child welfare system and their implications for social work education, caseworker training, and institutional change. The work critiques many of the existing social welfare acts and policies in terms of their treatment of children of color, and it provides best practices for each decision point in the child welfare process and for cultural competency measures and training. The text offers extensive measurement instruments that agencies can use to assess and correct institutional racism. To improve social work education, the book includes several model syllabi for the social work curriculum, and to deepen the discipline's engagement with this issue, the text concludes with a discussion of future directions for research and policy.

Torn Apart

Torn Apart
Author: Dorothy Roberts
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2022-04-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1541675452

An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. Child protection investigations ensnare a majority of Black children, putting their families under intense state surveillance and regulation. Black children are disproportionately likely to be torn from their families and placed in foster care, driving many to juvenile detention and imprisonment. The only way to stop the destruction caused by family policing, Torn Apart argues, is to abolish the child welfare system and liberate Black communities.

The Children's Bureau Legacy

The Children's Bureau Legacy
Author: Administration on Children, Youth and Families
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2013-04-01
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0160917220

Comprehensive history of the Children’s Bureau from 1912-2012 in eBook form that shares the legacy of this landmark agency that established the first Federal Government programs, research and social reform initiatives aimed to improve the safety, permanency and well-being of children, youth and families. In addition to bios of agency heads and review of legislation and publications, this important book provides a critical look at the evolution of the Nation and its treatment of children as it covers often inspiring and sometimes heart-wrenching topics such as: child labor; the Orphan Trains, adoption and foster care; infant and maternal mortality and childhood diseases; parenting, infant and child care education; the role of women's clubs and reformers; child welfare standards; Aid to Dependent Children; Depression relief; children of migrants and minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans), including Indian Boarding Schools and Indian Adoption Program; disabled children care; children in wartime including support of military families and World War II refugee children; Juvenile delinquency; early childhood education Head Start; family planning; child abuse and neglect; natural disaster recovery; and much more. Child welfare and related professionals, legislators, educators, researchers and advocates, university school of social work faculty and staff, libraries, and others interested in social work related to children, youth and families, particularly topics such as preventing child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption will be interested in this comprehensive history of the Children's Bureau that has been funded by the U.S. Federal Government since 1912.

The Legacy of Racism for Children

The Legacy of Racism for Children
Author: Margaret C. Stevenson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2020
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190056746

This volume is the first book to examine issues that arise when minority children's lives are directly or indirectly influenced by law and public policy, laws and policies that are rooted in historical racism. It addresses intersections of race/ethnicity within the context of child maltreatment, child dependency court, custody and interracial adoption, familial incarceration, school punishment and the so-called "school-to-prison pipeline," juvenile justice, police/youth interactions, jurors' perceptions of child and adolescent victims and defendants, and immigration law and policy.

Shattered Bonds

Shattered Bonds
Author: Dorothy Roberts
Publisher: Civitas Books
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2002-12-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780465070596

Shattered Bonds is a stirring account of a worsening American social crisis--the disproportionate representation of black children in the U.S. foster care system and its effects on black communities and the country as a whole. Tying the origins and impact of this disparity to racial injustice, Dorothy Roberts contends that child-welfare policy reflects a political choice to address startling rates of black child poverty by punishing parents instead of tackling poverty's societal roots. Using conversations with mothers battling the Chicago child-welfare system for custody of their children, along with national data, Roberts levels a powerful indictment of racial disparities in foster care and tells a moving story of the women and children who earn our respect in their fight to keep their families intact.

Handbook of Child Maltreatment

Handbook of Child Maltreatment
Author: Jill E. Korbin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 594
Release: 2013-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9400772084

This Handbook examines core questions still remaining in the field of child maltreatment. It addresses major challenges in child maltreatment work, starting with the question of what child abuse and neglect is exactly. It then goes on to examine why maltreatment occurs and what its consequences are. Next, it turns to prevention, treatment and intervention, as well as legal perspectives. The book studies the issue from the perspective of the broader international and cross-cultural human experience. Its aim is to review what is known, but even more importantly, to examine what remains to be known to make progress in helping abused children, their families, and their communities.

Race Matters in Child Welfare

Race Matters in Child Welfare
Author: Dennette Derezotes
Publisher: C W L A Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2005
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

"Although African Americans constituted 15% of the child population of the United States in 1999, they accounted for 45% of the children in substitute care. In contrast, white children, who constituted 60% of the U.S. population, accounted for only 36% of the children in out-of-home care. In addition, several studies show that children of different ethnic or racial backgrounds receive dissimilar treatment by the child welfare system, but little is known about the appropriateness of the treatment. This compilation of papers critically examines child welfare policy and practice, the causes of child maltreatment, and how each affects the disproportionate representation of African American children in the system."--BOOK JACKET.

Communities in Action

Communities in Action
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309452961

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Fathering and Poverty

Fathering and Poverty
Author: Anna Tarrant
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2021-08-05
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 1447348664

This book offers a critique of the popular claim that more data equals better health. In a study that redefines the public, academic, and policy debates around health, bodies, information and data, the authors consider the ways in which the phenomenon of self-diagnosis has created alternative worlds of knowledge and practices which are often at odds with professional medical advice. With a focus on data that concerns significant life changes, this book explores the potential challenges related to people's changing relationships with traditional health systems as access to, and control over, data continues to evolve.