Working with Traumatized Youth in Child Welfare, * Nancy Boyd Webb (ed.), * New York, Guildford Press, 2006, pp. xx + 316, ISBN 1 59385 224 X, 26.00

Abstract

The authors of the fifteen papers in this interesting volume are clinicians, researchers and academics. The three sections provide a theoretical framework, suggested interventions and consideration of the issues in collaboration between the child welfare and mental health systems working with traumatized young people. The editor’s stated aim is to address a perceived lack of acknowledgement by child welfare practitioners that abused children are traumatized, both by their past and by child welfare practices (p. xv). The papers are rooted in American practice, law and structures. There is a tantalizing glimpse of similar organizational pressures to the UK when Fontana and Gonzales write of ‘our vast, overwhelmed, and sometimes uncaring bureaucratic child care systems’ (p. 276). Similarly, they highlight funding issues, the need for prevention and the move to evidence-based practice. However, there are major differences between the UK and US settings for such work, such as the lack of universal health visiting, foster-parent training, the way in which information is collected (there seems to be no US equivalent of the Looking After Children materials), and the problems presented by young people having inadequate health insurance for the treatment needed.