From child abuse to permanency planning : child welfare services pathways and placements /

Permanency planning, the child welfare revolution of the 1970s and '80s, sought to end the limbo and drift that so many children in foster care experienced. Barth and his colleagues (all at the Univ. of California, Berkeley, except Courtney, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) report findings from a large-scale California study that investigated the extent to which the promise of permanency planning is being fulfilled. The book's 12 chapters are organized in four parts that frame the major issues in child welfare today; discuss children's entry into the system of care; analyze what influences their pathways through the system once in care; and examine their experiences in various types of placement, including kinship and specialized foster care as well as group care. A final chapter presents 15 trends drawn from the data and discusses their implications for future policy and practice. An important contribution to the literature on child welfare, recommended for scholars and policy makers as well as administrators and practitioners in the field.