Child Welfare: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice

Children who receive child welfare services are a vulnerable group, and their numbers are growing. All who care about them need to be fully informed about current outcomes, indicators of success and failure, and best practices. This second edition of Child Welfare: Connecting Research, Policy, and Practice has a special focus on Canadian child welfare and contains entirely new material on these important themes.
The book highlights major developments in child welfare and shows how these inform directions taken in research, policy, and practice. The book includes new sections on Indigenous issues and best practices, and several of its chapters review efforts to increase supports for families in need. Contributions from new and international authors illustrate the endemic nature of child welfare challenges and how we can learn from these experiences.
Contributors provide recommendations for promoting best practice and enhancing resilience among children and families. Closing chapters within each section and at the end of the book summarize key theoretical and practice issues along with recommendations to improve the research, policy, and practice continuum in child welfare. The challenge is to translate good research into policy and practice in ways that enhance the life chances of children who need our care and protection.

Kathleen Kufeldt's distinguished career in child welfare has included work in the areas of child protection and family counselling, extensive publication, and teaching and administration, including a four-year term as Chair in Child Protection at Memorial University. She is an adjunct professor at the University of New Brunswick, where she coordinates the research team focusing on child abuse and neglect at the Muriel McQueen Fergusson Centre for Family Violence Research.

Brad McKenzie is a professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba. From 1996 through 1998 he was anglophone editor of Canadian Social Work Review. His last book was Connecting Policy to Practice in the Human Services, co-authored with Brian Wharf.