The Family at Risk offers a comprehensive overview and assessment of the family preservation movement, a relatively new and highly controversial form of service delivery to families at imminent risk of child removal. Mandated by federal legislation and hotly debated by politicians, practitioners, and public citizens, family preservation programs provide flexible, labor-intensive, home-based services that allow families to remain intact while addressing issues that threaten their safety and survival. Marianne Berry examines such programs, which have proliferated throughout the United States,...

Although health and human service professionals traditionally receive extensive training in the emotional and physical aspects of caring for a person, they rarely receive adequate instruction in an area often as essential -- spirituality and religious belief. Recognizing the importance of religion to a large share of the population, Religious and Spiritual Aspects of Human Service Practice fills this gap in human services literature. James W. Ellor, F. Ellen Netting, and Jane M. Thibault address the challenge of understanding the client's perspective -- even when it involves a religious...

Understanding Social Problems, Policies, and Programs offers a comprehensive analysis of the policies used in the United States to develop the nation's social welfare programs. In this third edition, Leon Ginsberg updates social welfare policy through the 1990s. He explains developments that have taken place during the Clinton administration, in particular the sweeping changes effected by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, and details the major provisions of the new law and how it differs from laws previously in effect. He deals with the effect on...

In Networking Neighborhoods, Erik Van Hove establishes a direct link between existing perceptions of cities and the persistence of urban poverty. He explores a mystery surrounding urban poverty-its perpetuation despite the great wealth of modern nations and their efforts to eradicate it. Through his overview of urban history, his appeal to the ideas of key urban sociologists, and his experiences as a partner in an unconventional neighborhood development agency, Van Hove offers a fresh way of looking at urban environments that enables the resuscitation of neighborhoods choked off from the...

Jonathan Engel traces the policy debates over healthcare delivery, and the ways of paying for it, that were conducted during the second quarter of the twentieth century in the United States. Examining the views advanced by doctors, including those unallied with the American Medical Association's position, as well as by "reformers"-academics, public health officers, philanthropists, foundation executives, and independent scholars-Engel displays how the discussion involved much more than the legislative efforts of New Deal Democrats regarding health insurance.

Thanks to advances in medical technology, better health care systems, and improvements in lifestyle habits, the twenty-first century brings unprecedented changes in life expectancy and increased numbers of older adults globally. As the elder population grows, so does the knowledge of and interest in gerontology. A burgeoning field, gerontology constantly sees new developments in research, the emergence of areas of study such as financial gerontology and elder ethics, and the introduction of programs and services for the aging. In this comprehensive guide to current topics in aging, Tirrito...

In this comprehensive survey combining architectural and social policy studies, Robert D. Leighninger Jr. reappraises the enduring achievements of public investment during the New Deal era. Leighninger argues that, though these initiatives produced the lasting backbone of the U.S. physical and cultural infrastructure, the value of these long-range investments is now being forgotten. In response Leighninger systematically assesses the schools, housing, bridges, roads, power plants, courthouses, hospitals, museums, stadiums, zoos, parks, and other public facilities built under the auspices of...

A step-by-step handbook for in-home case management from a veteran caregiver

Elder Practice addresses an issue of increasing interest to the spectrum of professionals, paraprofessionals, and volunteers who work with the elderly-how to serve the rapidly expanding population of older adults who spend their later years as member of the community rather than as residents of an institutional facility. In this innovative volume, a team of social work professionals proposes a model that affords these adults the same coordinated care traditionally found in institutional settings.