Sharing the daily struggles of children and families residing in transitional situations (homelessness or because of risk of homelessness, being connected with the child welfare system, or being new immigrants in temporary housing), this text recommends strategies for delivering mental health and intensive case-management services that maintain family integrity and stability. Based on work undertaken at the Center for the Vulnerable Child in Oakland, California, which has provided mental health and intensive case management to children and families living in transition for more than two decades, this volume outlines culturally sensitive practices to engage families that feel disrespected by the assistance of helping professionals or betrayed by their forgotten promises. Chapters discuss the Center's staffers' attempt to trace the influence of power, privilege, and beliefs on their education and their approach to treatment. Many U.S. children living in impoverished transitional situations are of color and come from generations of poverty, and the professionals they encounter are white, middle-class, and college-educated. The Center's work to identify the influences or obstacles interfering with services for this target population is therefore critical to formulating more effective treatment, interaction, and care.
Price: $35.00
Pages: 264
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publication Date:
21 January 2014
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780231160971
Format: Paperback
This unique volume highlights a major public health problem: the plight of vulnerable children in the foster care and homelessness systems. Within a social justice framework, Cheryl Zlotnick and her contributors give these children a voice to express the oppression, bias, racism, and power differentials underlying their care. By viewing these children as members of transitional families, this book describes how to reduce treatment disparities and unify service systems. It is a must-read that will change your views of how to best understand and care for these children.
— Ellen L. Bassuk, founder, The National Center on Family Homelessness
Cheryl Zlotnick is a principal investigator at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute. For the past twenty-five years, she has worked as a clinical nurse specialist, program coordinator, evaluator, director, and scientist to promote the health and well-being of children and families living in unstable, homeless, or transitional situations.
Introduction
Part I. Theories of Practice with Transitional Families
1. Transitional Families: Where Do I Begin?, by Cheryl Zlotnick and Luann DeVoss
2. "We Don't Get Whuppings Here Anymore": Toward a Collaborative, Ecological Model of Parenting, by Marguerite A. Wright
3. Giving Voice: An Exploration of the Integration of Social Justice and Infant Mental Health, by Erica Torres and Kathryn Orfirer
Part II. Preparing the Organization for Its Work with Transitional Families
4. Letting Some Air into the Room: Opening Agency Space for Considerations of Culture and Power, by Lisa R. Berndt
5. Rediscovering Positive Work Relationships Within a Diverse Relationship-Based Organization: Serving Children in Transition, by Karen Thomas
Part III. Promising Programs and Culturally Informed Interventions
6. Transforming Shame: Allowing Memories in Foster Care to Inform Interventions with Foster Youth, by Lou Felipe
7. Crossing the Border and Facing the System: Challenges Immigrant Families Experience When a Child Is Removed from Their Care and Placed into the Child Welfare System, by Rosario Murga-Kusnir
8. "I Am Bad!", by Roberto Macias Sanchez
9. "When Do I Get to Go Home?", by Peggy Pearson
10. The CATS Project: Helping Families Land on Their Feet, by Vance Hitchner
Part IV. Needs for the Future
11. A Systems Dilemma: Intergenerational Foster Care and Homelessness, by Cheryl Zlotnick
List of Contributors
Index
