The Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution (PCHIP) Act, which was passed in Alberta in 1999 and subject to immediate constitutional challenge, demonstrates the relationships between the fields of politics and law, and between youth criminal justice and child welfare legislation. The Act allowed authorities to apprehend and detain a youth engaged, or at risk of becoming engaged in prostitution for five to forty-seven days in a protective safe house. Though the PCHIP Act was passed as child welfare legislation, the punitive nature of the detainment led some to argue that the PCHIP Act was actually youth criminal justice legislation. This blurry boundary between child welfare and youth justice has negative consequences for particular groups of youth. In this case, Aboriginal female youth are disproportionately detained at protective safe houses. This research applies concepts from Pierre Bourdieu and other theorists to critically analyze the PCHIP Act as a case study. By drawing on various types of data, including the PCHIP Act, legislative debates, court transcripts, newspaper articles, government reports, and academic literature, two areas of inquiry are addressed. The first issue is the relationships and boundaries between the fields of politics and law, and between child welfare and youth criminal justice legislation. Secondly, this thesis attempts to explain why Aboriginal females are disproportionately confined by the PCHIP Act. This research concludes that the fields of politics and law constantly interact with each other, and the boundaries between child welfare and youth criminal justice are vulnerable to the outcomes of these conflict-ridden exchanges. These struggles, compounded by historical factors, have negative consequences for female Aboriginal youth in particular.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009. / Title from title screen (site viewed January 5, 2010). PDF text: vii, 162 p. : ill. ; 748 K. UMI publication number: AAT 3360090. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rutgers University, 2009. / "Graduate Program in Social Work." Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-113).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 279-285). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1996. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2961. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 93).

During the past two decades, court and child welfare agency officials have begun to view the use of mediation in child protection cases as a logical and cost-effective approach to finding safe and mutually agreeable solutions to cases in a timely manner so that permanency can be established more quickly for children. While those who support the use of child protection mediation generally believe that the mediation process has a positive influence on permanency outcomes; few studies have attempted to examine the accuracy of these claims. Utilizing participant survey data from an evaluation of a pilot child protection mediation program implemented in 43 Texas counties, as well as case-level administrative data from Child Protective Services (CPS), the present study sought to address gaps in the existing literature by more closely examining the association between child protection mediation and permanency outcomes for children in foster care. In addition, this study examined the impact of parental engagement with the mediation process on permanency outcomes. Propensity Score Matching (PSM) was used to match 315 mediated cases with 315 non-mediated cases that were resolved through the traditional adversarial process (N=630). Descriptive bivariate analysis indicated that mediated cases varied significantly from non-mediated cases on several of the observed characteristics. Furthermore, the findings of this study indicate that neither participation in mediation nor parental engagement in the mediation process had a discernable effect on whether permanency was achieved or on children’s final placement outcomes. Interestingly, the use of mediation, as well as higher levels of parental engagement were both found to be associated with increased time to permanency. While the findings were somewhat counterintuitive, the results of this study suggest that the phenomena of permanency may be better explained not by one or two specific factors, but rather a combination of child, family, agency, court, and community factors that work together, and in some instances against each other, to influence the final permanency outcome. The findings of this study underscore the difficulty in measuring the impact of a single intervention on outcomes likely affected by a multitude of competing factors. / text

Teenage girls in foster care are estimated to have pregnancy rates that are roughly 20% higher than the national average. However, most research on the sexual health of foster youth has used small, non-representative samples of foster youth. This study examined both sexual activity and pregnancy among maltreated youth referred to child welfare systems using data from the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-being, the first nationally representative sample of youth who come into contact with the child welfare system. Three separate analyses were conducted to answer the overall question, ‘how does foster care impact sexual activity and pregnancy for maltreated youth?’ Descriptive statistics, multinomial regression and hierarchal generalized linear modeling were used to address separate research aims to understand foster care’s impact on sexual activity and pregnancy. Results suggest that there are few differences between maltreated youth who enter foster care and those who do not enter foster care. Additionally, foster care does not appear to impact rates of sexual activity or pregnancy for maltreated youth. Rather, problems in the family of origin and maltreatment the child had experienced appear to influence both sexual activity and pregnancy. / text

Εμάς η έρευνα μας επικεντρώθηκε στις μη κυβερνητικές οργανώσεις στην Ελλάδα που αφορούν τα παιδιά και μάλιστα πιο συγκεκριμένα κακοποιημένα, φτωχά, ορφανά, άρρωστα παιδιά κτλ.. Επίσης παρουσιάζουμε κάποιες οργανώσεις για παιδιά με νοητική υστέρηση ή κάποιου άλλου είδους αναπηρία. Οι μη κυβερνητικές οργανώσεις για το παιδί εντάσσονται στη λογική για την υπεράσπιση, προώθηση και την εξασφάλιση των δικαιωμάτων της. Απώτερος σκοπός τους είναι η προστασία του παιδιού. Η έρευνα μας ως επί των πλείστων στηρίχθηκε σε στοιχεία που αντλήσαμε για τις διάφορες οργανώσεις από το διαδίκτυο. Επίσης συμβουλευτήκαμε κάποια βιβλία και ορισμένα άρθρα. Προσπαθήσαμε να συλλέξουμε πληροφορίες σχετικά με το έτος ίδρυσης της κάθε οργάνωσης, την οργάνωση, τους σκοπούς και τις λειτουργίες καθώς και τους τομείς δράσης της. Στο τέλος της εργασίας θα αναφερθούμε στην κριτική που κάνει το κράτος στις οργανώσεις αυτές. / -

Det är sällan man läser i tidningar om det goda sociala arbetet som utförs av socialtjänster i Sverige. Den enskilde medborgaren vänder sig inte heller ofta till media för att få berätta om stödet och det goda bemötandet de fått av myndigheten. Däremot kan klienter kontakta media för ett sista försök till att få uppmärksamhet samt upprättelse i ett beslut. Denna kontakt i kombination med journalistens sökande efter nyhetsvärde kan resultera i artiklar där socialtjänsten arbete framställs negativt. Således kan en missvisande bild målas upp i media, särskilt hos människor som aldrig själva haft kontakt med myndigheten. Ärenden gällande barn och ungdomar granskas oftare än övriga inom socialt arbete. Syftet med vår uppsats var att undersöka hur socialsekreterare som arbetar med barn och ungdomar upplever att de påverkas av den negativa bild som kan förekomma i media. Studien är kvalitativ och genomfördes i två fokusgrupper med tre informanter i var grupp. Empirin analyserades utifrån innehållsanalys med meningsbärande enheter, koder och kategorier. Resultatet i studien påvisar bland annat att socialsekreterarna som handlägger barnavårdsärenden har en negativ uppfattning av hur media skildrar deras arbete, att sekretessen hindrar att ge en heltäckande bild, att det är viktigt att ha stöd på arbetsplatsen samt att sociala mediers framväxt skapar nya möjligheter för personligare påhopp. Slutsatsen för studien visar att media har en avgörande roll gällande konstruktionen av samhällets bild på socialtjänsten. Beroende på struktur och ledarskap kan socialsekreterare som handlägger barnavårdsärendens känna mer eller mindre påverkan i arbetet. / It is rare to read in the newspapers about the good social work of social services in Sweden. Individual citizens are turning nor often to media to tell us the support and the good reception they received by the Authority. However, clients can contact the media for a final attempt to get attention and redress in a decision. This connector in combination with the journalist's quest for novelty may result in articles where the social work produced negative. Thus, a misleading picture painted in the media, especially in people who never have had contact with the agency. Cases concerning children and adolescents are reviewed more frequently than others in social work. The purpose of our study was to investigate how social workers who work with children and young people feel that they are affected by the negative image that may appear in the media. The study is qualitative and was conducted in two focus groups with three informants in each group. The empirical data was analyzed based on content analysis with meaningful units, codes and categories. The results of the study indicate, among other things, that the social workers dealing with child welfare cases have a negative perception of how the media portrays their work, that confidentiality prevents to give a complete picture, it is important to have support in the workplace, and that social media's emergence creates new opportunities for more personal attacks. The conclusion of the study shows that the media has a crucial role existing structure of social perception on social services. Depending on the structure and leadership can be social workers dealing with child welfare errand feel more or less influence in the work.

The main objectives of the study have been to investigate the welfare policy in South Africa as it relates to childcare, compile the profile of trans-racial families, to examine the socialisation processes within trans-racial families. To compile a profile of people who give away their children for adoption or foster care, identify the needs and challenges confronting trans - racial families, as well as establish the support networks available to trans-racial families. The study has therefore established that the childcare policy of the Department of Welfare is based on the concept of permanency planning. The premise is that a child's most important bonds are those made with his parents and that they should take care of him or her. Preventive services aimed at preserving the family unit must be emphasised. The family is the institution in which the basic moral and social being of the individual personality is formed. It is here that the child learns that he is dependent on the co-operation of others for the satisfaction of his own needs and for the realisation of his own goals. However, when the social and living conditions in a family are poor, other alternatives have to be considered. In South Africa, like in other countries the first alternative is to place the children in care. There are various places of care. In South Africa, children in need of care can either be placed for adoption in a residential care or in a foster home. Adoption is a permanent arrangement, whereby a married or single parent places a child in their care permanently. There is a legal binding. Alternatively a child can be placed with a family of a different race. This is another way of providing a child or an infant of a different race or/and culture with new legal parents. The study has also established that all adoptive parents who participated in this particular study were white, mostly females. The majority of the parents were married. Most of them have also acquired tertiary education. Most of them were also employed, and they live in racially integrated communities. Of all the twenty families that were interviewed twelve of them had no children of their own. Most of the families reported to be Christians. There were thirty-five children amongst the families that participated in the study. There were eighteen females and seventeen males Nineteen children were African, twelve were coloured, three were Indian and only one child was half-Indian and half coloured. Most families reported that their children were outgoing, but shy. Most of the children attend integrated schools, and there are other adopted children at the school. Most of the children are comfortable with blacks and whites. Six of the parents who gave away their children for adoption and foster care were in their late twenties. Whereas three were still teenagers. One was in her early twenties, five were in their mid twenties and only two were in their early thirties. Seven of the birth parents were blacks, another seven coloureds, two Indians and only one was white. The main reason for giving their children away for adoption and foster care was due to financial constraints. Support networks are very essential for adoptive families to function properly and this give them an opportunity to share their burdens with other parents. Many adoptive parents who participated in this study belong to the Rainbow Support Group in Johannesburg, and most adoptive families also rely on the support of their families and friends. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2002.