Contemporary Child Welfare Research Articles

Securing the Welfare of Children: Policies Past, Present, and Future

For the past century in the United States, the welfare of children has been considered a legitimate concern of government, but recent analyses have been critical of the efforts of the public child welfare system. This paper places the contemporary child welfare system, and its failures, in a sociocultural context, from an international perspective. The social construction of childhood is analyzed, and the ways that this construction marks children as a class in need of protection are discussed. Recent global demographic changes that affect the welfare of children are presented. Policies to secure the welfare of children are placed first in historical context, and then analyzed as they currently exist in fragmented late-industrial societies with multiple sites of authority. Following this analysis, future policy directions are recommended.

Interdiscursivity and Child Welfare: The Ascent and Durability of Psycho-Legalism

This paper examines the knowledges affecting contemporary child welfare policy and practice. Using a number of conceptual frameworks, it seeks to challenge the view of some commentators that a new ‘legalism’ and a putative concern with ‘surface form’ has accorded formal psychological knowledge, and hence the ‘psy’ complex, a diminished and waning significance. The paper argues that, although there have been significant changes in child welfare practice, rumours of the waning of the ‘psy’ complex have been exaggerated. A detailed analysis of the way the law thinks, and of policy documents and practice guidance reveals both the complex interdiscursivity of the new ‘legalism’ and the durability of psychological and developmentalist forms of thought.

Time, Temporality and Child Welfare

This article presents data from a recently completed ethnographic study conducted in a British metropolitan social services department between 1993 and 1995. It argues that issues of time and temporality have central, but hitherto relatively neglected, analytic importance in understanding contemporary child welfare. It contends that rational `time(s)' may be classified both as `ordering' phenomena and as artefacts of social workers' situated ordering practices. So, while organizational rhythms form temporal patterns, social workers also make considerable use of rational time(s) in the construction of various types of accounts, particularly those of an `exonerative' nature. These references serve not only to preserve institutional realities, but also function as moral accounts, which maintain the consistency of the social workers' `altruistic' professional discourse during the course of morally tainted rationing activities.

Implementing a parent involvement/parent education program in a children's residential treatment center

Two prominent trends in contemporary child welfare, permanency planning and the family-centered model of care, are old theoretical ideas that have had great difficulty in finding corresponding practice methodologies. This article presents a practical model and discussion of the strategy and tactics involved in the process of developing and implementing a family-centered model by providing an effective parent involvement program in the residential treatment setting. Both didactic and experiential components are suggested, with emphasis on the latter in the context of planned change and the needs of children, parents, staff, and agency administration.

Infancy: Its Place in Human Development

One of the most important issues in contemporary child welfare has to do with the possible benefits and dangers of day care for infants and young children. Like so many problems facing us today, the issue of day care is enormously complex because so many different factors of unknown quantity and degree can contribute to the outcome. And, if that were not enough, we really do not know what, when, and how to measure the outcome. Unlike a laboratory problem that we can define and limit, real life social phenomena challenge our traditional conceptualizations and methodologies and plead for new methods of investigation. The issue of day care, and its impact on children, is a central concern of the two books considered here. In the first book,<i>Infancy: Its Place in Human Development</i>, Jerome Kagan and his colleagues describe an investigation of the effects of a day-care program in Boston's