Social workers today not only face competing claims concerning the rights and needs of children and youth, but they also confront contradictions between policy and practice. Social workers are expected to fight for the best interests of the child, even though financial support for children's welfare and education grows scarce. They are asked to save "children at risk," while, at the same time, they are urged to protect communities from "risky children"; and they are encouraged to "leave no child behind," while also implementing "zero tolerance" policies to keep educational environments free from troubled youth.
A cutting-edge text that deals directly with the confusion and complexity of modern child welfare, Childhood, Youth, and Social Work in Transformation features contributions from a truly interdisciplinary group of practitioners, scholars, and activists. Examining the theoretical, political, and practical aspects of working with youth today, this volume breaks free from existing modes of thought and strategies of practice and prompts readers to critically reflect on accepted approaches and new possibilities of action.
Contributors analyze how economic, political, and cultural changes over the last several decades have reshaped the experiences and representations of children and youth in the United States. They examine conceptions of troubled children and youth in contemporary policies and programs and assess why certain discourses about troubling youth are so compelling to professionals, policymakers, and the public. In conclusion, these skilled professionals explore the reinvention of social work policy and practice, including the need to forge relationships that respect the experiences, rights, and personhood of children and youth.
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction and Conceptual Framework
- Part I: Exploring Changing Discourses of Childhood and Youth
- 1. Making Trouble: Representations of Social Work,
Youth, and Pathology
- 2. Missing Children: Representing Young People Away
from Placement
- 3. It Ain’t as Simple as It Seems: Risky Youths,
Morality, and Service Markets in Schools
- 4. “Stop the Super Jail for Kids”: Youth Activism to Reclaim
Childhood in the Juvenile Justice System
- 5. Good Mothers / Teen Mothers: Claiming
Rights and Responsibilities
- 6. The Well-Being of Children and the Question of Attachment
- Part II: Contexts and Settings
- 7. Childhood by Geography: Toward a Framework of Rights,
Responsibilities, and Entitlements
- 8. From “Youth Home” to “Juvenile Detention”:
Constructing Disciplined Children in Detroit
- 9. Educating All Our Children
- 10. Constructing Ability and Disability Among Preschoolers
in the Crestview Headstart Program
- 11. Children and Youth in a Medicalized World:
Young People’s Agency in Mental Health Treatment
- 12. Accounting for Risk: Children and Youth in
Community-Based Reform
- 13. “At Risk” for Becoming Neoliberal Subjects: Rethinking
the “Normal” Middle-Class Family
- Part
III: Reinventing Social Work with Children and Youth
- 14. Child’s-Eye View
- 15. On Project SpeakOUT
- 16. The Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project:
A Case Study in Law and Social Justice
- 17. “You May Even be President of the United States
One Day”? Challenging Commercialized Feminism in
Programming for Girls in Juvenile Justice
- 18. Youth Uprising: Gritty Youth Leadership Development
and Communal Transformation
- 19. Young People as Leaders in Confl ict Resolution
- 20. Y.O.U.T.H. Training Project: Foster Youth as Teachers
to Transform Social Work
- Afterword
- About the Contributors
- Index
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