Abstract
Child welfare is a crucial topic in social work education, as approximately half of all social work jobs in the US involve working with children, families and schools. While a portion of many required Bachelor’s-level and Master’s-level policy classes in social work education cover the topic of child welfare, some students will receive more in-depth education on the topic. Social work programs with specific child welfare tracks or those that provide a stipend or tuition waiver for students who plan to work in child welfare post-graduation will need a comprehensive textbook on this topic to familiarize students with the many facets of child welfare history and current landscape. Cathleen Lewandowski’s Child welfare: An integrative perspective meets this need by providing a detailed look at the history of child welfare services and policies in the US, practice-focused information about child protection and comprehensive strategies to improve child well-being.
Organized into three sections (Child Welfare Policy and Practice, Protecting Children from Harm, Child Well-Being), this book could be useful in policy or practice classes and includes information about primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies for child abuse. Within each section are several chapters addressing specific subtopics, which are summarized at the end of the chapter. Each chapter also has discussion questions for use in the classroom, as well as suggested readings and references. For use as a textbook, Child Welfare is easy to navigate, inexpensive and comprehensive for Bachelor’s or Master’s students. Students might need some clarification about the Suggested Readings and References sections in each chapter, as they contain different resources from each other and the number of suggested readings (25 or more, in chapters that are approximately 10 pages long) may be overwhelming. Photographs, tables and short chapter lengths are pluses for use as a textbook, as they make the readings manageable and engaging. Instructors using this text could assume that students might complete their readings if the instructor assigned one or two chapters and discussion questions could be used in class for reading comprehension and critical analysis.
In terms of diversity, this text discusses specific racial and ethnic groups who were marginalized in early child welfare endeavors and approaches the topic of child welfare with a social justice lens throughout. The inclusion of information about children disproportionally impacted by child abuse or child welfare programs provides readers an opportunity to think critically about what it means to help children and the systemic factors contributing to current and historical child welfare initiatives.
Although this book addresses aspects of child welfare that might be applicable to improving the well-being of children anywhere, it is most relevant in the US and the first part of the text focuses specifically on the US. In many parts of the US, social work students learn about legal requirements, such as mandatory reporting, in their region and have questions about the laws in other regions of the country. Instructors might often field student questions about the specific child abuse reporting laws in their area and must answer with caution to ensure that students do not assume that every state has the same reporting laws and procedures. Child Welfare includes a discussion of various state requirements that clearly conveys that the US has state-by-state requirements and that students should familiarize themselves with the laws of their states before assuming mandatory reporting roles. For students interested in macro initiatives to improve child welfare, this content can highlight the need for standardization, while recognizing that children from various subgroups (e.g., African Americans) may have disproportionate representation or needs in the child welfare system.