Until recently, there has not been a great deal of overlap in the child welfare and trauma literatures. This text promises to cross that divide by integrating perspectives from both fields to help practitioners understand and address the special needs of maltreated children and adolescents and their families. Current knowledge on attachment, trauma, and risk and resilience is clearly explained, including the impact of abuse on the brain. Readers learn how to conduct assessments and implement a range of effective helping strategies with youth in foster care and other settings. Featuring extensive case illustrations, the book gives particular attention to diversity issues and the importance of supporting child and family strengths.

316 pp

Child therapist Nancy Boyd Webb brings together the nation's leading practitioners and thinkers for a comprehensive look at how our child welfare system is dealing with the children and families it serves. At the epicenter of the experience is trauma: the trauma of abuse, neglect, separation, and poverty and all its social and health ramifications. Tracing the causes and effects of trauma is an extremely challenging and complex task that, in this book, takes the reader on an illuminating journey through issues of policy, theory, research, assessment, environment, neurology, and clinical practices.

Here's what specialists have to say about Working with Traumatized Youth in Child Welfare.

This book is a 'must read' for anyone administrating, investigating, monitoring, or caring for youth in the child welfare system. It supplies basic information for students in mental health and other fields who plan to provide care or treatment for this population. Chapters define problems faced by the child welfare system and the youth and family members under its care, review the effects of maltreatment on the developing brain, and detail treatment methods and interventions that may assist youths' recovery from (often multiple) traumas."

--Kathleen Nader, DSW, Austin, Texas

"This refreshing and long-needed book will open new possibilities for interventions with children and families in the child welfare system. It offers a compelling review of the impact of trauma on a child's brain and development. The assessment and intervention methods, resources, and case examples in every chapter brilliantly integrate theory and practice and support the development of skills that are critical for this work. This is a 'must read' for clinicians, child welfare workers, and program managers, and a great text for students preparing for child welfare practice."

--Pat Sandau-Beckler, PhD, LCSW, School of Social Work, New Mexico State University

"Nancy Boyd Webb is a nationally known expert in child treatment, and this timely volume will be a welcome contribution for current and future child welfare practitioners. The book guides the reader through the latest theories and research on the association of early life trauma with developmental psychopathology, then presents empirically based treatment strategies for traumatized maltreated youth. Ideal for undergraduate and graduate classrooms in social work, psychology, nursing, special education--wherever concern for the mental health of maltreated children is found."

--Martha Morrison Dore, PhD, Adelphi University School of Social Work