Culture and Child Protection - Softcover

Marie Connolly, Yvonne Crichton-Hill And Tony Ward

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1843102706 ISBN 13: 9781843102700

Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

Providing services that are culturally relevant is an ongoing challenge for practitioners, managers, and policy-makers within the social services. Culture and Child Protection is a concise exploration of the close links between social service practices and cultural values which offers a culturally sensitive model of child protection practice. The authors demonstrate the ways in which a combination of personal, professional and societal attitudes often influence practice decisions. In a context where children from ethnic minorities dominate the welfare statistics of the Western economies, the authors argue against a reliance on rigid approaches to working with particular ethnic groups. They propose effective alternative strategies that will assist social workers in responding appropriately to diverse cultural needs and circumstances. Implications of cultural difference are also considered with respect to class, socio-economic group, gender and age, reinforcing the need to recognise broader interpretations of difference within practice. This book is full of integrated examples and case studies and also discusses wider practice issues, such as working with offenders, the impact of funding restraints and the dynamic of reflexivity in practice and supervision. Culture and Child Protection is a key text that will help social workers and culture academics to understand the ways in which cultural thinking affects and shapes child protection practice.

About this title

About the Authors

Yvonne Crichton-Hill is a New Zealand-born Samoan and is a lecturer with the Department of Social Work at the University of Canterbury. She has extensive experience of working in the areas of child protection social work and youth justice, and in particular work with Samoan families. She is committed to the development of practice models that are responsive to cultural values and experience. Yvonne has previously published in the area of cross-cultural practice and ethnocentric explanations of domestic violence.

Dr Tony Ward, PhD, DipClinPsyc, is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has worked as a clinical psychologist and an academic in a number of settings, and has a small private practice. He has written over 200 publications, including ten books, primarily in the area of forensic psychology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1843102706
• ISBN 13: 9781843102700
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 146