Child & Family Social Work 

About: Child & Family Social Work is an academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Social work & Child protection. It has an ISSN identifier of 1356-7500. Over the lifetime, 1665 publications have been published receiving 42567 citations. The journal is also known as: children & kid.

Early outcomes for young adults transitioning from out-of-home care in the USA

Abstract: This paper describes the well-being of participants in the Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth (n = 603), a study of youth leaving out-of-home care in the USA, at the point where they have been ‘young adults’ for about 1 year. Although some of these young adults are in stable situations and either moving forward with their education or employed in promising jobs, more of them are having significant difficulties during the early stages of the transition to adulthood. Too many are neither employed nor in school, have children that they are not able to parent, suffer from persistent mental illness or substance use disorders, find themselves without basic necessities, become homeless, or end up involved with the criminal justice system. They are doing worse than other young adults across a number of important dimensions. Most of these young adults continue to maintain relations with members of their family of origin, with many finding themselves living with family at age 19. Importantly, those young people who chose to remain under the care and supervision of the child welfare system experienced better outcomes than those who either chose to or were forced to leave care.

Research review: young people leaving care

Abstract: This paper reviews the international research on young people leaving care. Set in the context of a social exclusion framework, it explores young people’s accelerated and compressed transitions to adulthood, and discusses the development and classification of leaving care services in responding to their needs. It then considers the evidence from outcome studies and argues that adopting a resilience framework suggests that young people leaving care may fall into three groups: young people ‘moving on’, ‘survivors’ and ‘victims’. In concluding, it argues that these three pathways are associated with the quality of care young people receive, their transitions from care and the support they receive after care.

Fostering family resiliency: a review of the key protective factors

Abstract: The aim of this integrative review was to identify the protective factors that contribute to family resiliency. Families are comprised of individuals who interact across levels in a socio-ecological system. Family resiliency does not develop through evasion of risk, but through successful application of protective factors to engage in adverse situations and emerge from them stronger. In an effort to move away from pathological labelling, this review provides a foundation for strength-based family interventions. Thirteen peerreviewed databases were searched for articles and information regarding family resiliency. Careful review yielded 24 protective factors that foster resiliency across three distinct but interactive levels: individual, family and community. The protective factors identified in this review of the literature offer an excellent starting point for development of clinical interventions to support family resiliency.

Relationship-based practice and reflective practice: holistic approaches to contemporary child care social work

Abstract: The renewed interest in relationship-based practice can be understood in the child care social work context as a response to the call to re-focus practice in this field. Relationship-based practice challenges the prevailing trends which emphasize reductionist understandings of human behaviour and narrowly conceived bureaucratic responses to complex problems. In so doing practitioners engaged in relationship-based practice need to be able to cope with the uniqueness of each individual's circumstances and the diverse knowledge sources required to make sense of complex, unpredictable problems. This paper argues that if relationship-based practice is to become an established and effective approach to practice, practitioners need to develop their reflective capabilities. An outline of contemporary understandings of relationship-based and reflective practice is offered and findings from doctoral research drawn on to identify how reflective practice complements relationship-based practice. The product of this complementary relationship is enhanced understandings across four aspects of practice: the client, the professional self, the organizational context and the knowledges informing practice. The paper concludes by acknowledging the inextricably interconnected nature of relationship-based and reflective practice and emphasizes the importance of practitioners being afforded opportunities to practise in relational and reflective ways.