The family at risk
Subtitle: issues and trends in family preservation services
By: Marianne Berry.
Series: Social problems and social issues; Social problems and social issues (Columbia, S.C.)
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Columbia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 197
Subjects: Family social work -- United States; Home-based family services -- United States; Problem families -- United States; Child welfare -- United States
Description: The Family at Risk offers a comprehensive overview and assessment of the family preservation movement, a relatively new and highly controversial effort to deliver services to families at imminent risk of child removal. Mandated by federal law and hotly debated by politicians, practitioners, and citizens, family preservation programs offer intensive, home-based services that allow families to remain intact while addressing issues that threaten their safety and survival.

Marianne Berry takes stock of the promise and challenges associated with these programs, used increasingly throughout the United States, and speculates on the future of this emotionally charged aspect of social work policy and practice.

Rather than present a single model of intensive family preservation service, such as the widely publicized Homebuilders program, Berry compares several models currently in use and measures the effectiveness of individual models with various subpopulations of the child welfare system.

In addition, she defines many commonly misused terms, including "imminent risk" and "reasonable efforts," and illustrates how principles of family preservation programs are often at odds with the aims and constraints of larger child welfare and protective service systems.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The call to preserve families; title: The policy framework of permanency planning and family preservation; title: The empirical base for family preservation principles; title: Intensive family preservation service models; title: Family preservation programs and their effectiveness; title: Administrative and organizational issues; title: Determining "risk" and targeting appropriate cases; title: The relative efficacy of hard and soft services; title: Combining research and practice tools; title: Future directions for family preservation.