In pursuing our weekly practice at CA 360 to search for insights and real life stories, we never stop with the Home Page. We hit those navigation bars --too often in small type-- to uncover the house bulletins, dig up research reports, and other nuggets most relevant to our advocacy mission.

To broaden our pursuit of useful information to share with you, we recently asked our colleague, Dr. Phyllis Goldberg, a sociologist, to undertake a search of academic journals that might reveal voices, views, and insights into child well being that don't ordinarily get published  in the American press, and seldom turn up in conventional Web searches. Phyllis unearthed a host of journals, many of them based in the UK but with an international scope. And, since she wears a journalist's hat as well as a scholar's cap, she's deftly translated a few of the articles that intrigued her most into shorter, more readable prose.

1.  The neglect of neglect

Way back in February of 1996, Olive Stevenson from the School of Social Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK, pointed to the gap between the knowledge that already exists about the conditions kids need in order to develop and the actual practice of social work. The problem isn't that we don't know what works, she argued. We're simply not doing it. The solution? Stevenson urged that the relevant knowledge be "assembled and organized in ways that will be useful to social workers" so that they could become more proactive in intervention.

["Emotional abuse and neglect: a time for reappraisal," in Child & Family Social Work, Vol. I, Issue 1, February, 1996. Pages 13-18, http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/cfs]

2.  Repairing shattered lives

Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of Kids Company and A Place to Be, has written an accessible and compelling book about the lives of children and young people who have experienced loss, neglect, abuse, and exposure to violence and drugs.

She has taken case studies of children and young people she has worked with, and written a detailed and sensitive account of each young person's experiences in the form of a letter to them. She relates her knowledge of the young person's life events, giving her perception of the effects these have had on their view of the world, on their view of themselves, and on their behaviour. She also describes the relationship that has developed between herself and the young person. She writes with passion and outrage at the extent of the suffering and abuse the child has dealt with, and her letters are filled with empathy, admiration and understanding.

The letters are interspersed with sections that are addressed directly to people who work with children and young people, giving information and insight into the effects on a child of experiencing loss and trauma. In the absence of sustained healthy relationships, children develop strategies in order to survive emotionally. Some of these coping strategies can manifest as behaviours that are seen by others as unacceptable and unmanageable, which can result in these children experiencing further punishment, rejection and abandonment, thus continuing a downward spiral of damage. Batmanghelidjh argues that, given the inadequacies in the care and attachment these children received from their families, compounded by the failings of the wider society to intervene and protect them, the behaviours and coping strategies adopted by each of the young people in Shattered Lives demonstrate resilience, courage and adaptability to extreme circumstances.

By addressing the chapters directly to the child, rather than the usual approach of writing about them, we are strongly reminded of the need for children to be heard, witnessed and validated.

[From Children & Society: The International Journal of Childhood and Children's Services. Volume 21, Issue 1, Pages 81-82, January 2007. The journal, based in the UK, is published on behalf of the National Children's Bureau.]

3.  Child welfare: success stories

Is there a recipe for a good working relationship in child welfare? An in-depth exploration of six child welfare worker-client partnership/pairs, based on interviews and opportunities for each member of the pair to reflect on and respond to what their partners had to say, turned up two key ingredients of success: (1) the "soft, mindful and judicious use of power" and (2) "a humanistic attitude and style that stretches traditional professional ways-of-being."

[Based on Catherine de Boer and Nick Coady, "Good helping relationships in child welfare: learning from stories of success" in Child & Family Social Work, Vol. 12, Issue 1, Pages 32-42. February 2007. http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/cfs]

4.  Kids still missing from the social work curriculum

Twenty years after survey evidence showed that UK social work students could complete their training without having learnt about or worked with children, three prominent academics charge that little has changed: there is still no guarantee, they say, that a "qualified" graduate will have been taught about or even assessed in communication skills with children and young people. Since neither social work research or practice has  any clear, mutually agreed on idea of what "counts" as effective communication with children, it's no wonder that the curriculum is silent on the subject.

[Based on Barry Luckock, Michelle Lefevre, and Karen Tanner, "Teaching and learning communication with children and young people: developing the qualifying social work curriculum in a changing policy context" in Child & Family Social Work, Volume 12,  Issue 2, Pages 192-201, May 2007. http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/cfs]

5.  Why Johnnie and Janey can't speak for themselves: Adults don't think they should

"The extent to which young people are involved in legal decision-making depends on assumptions and perceptions about their ability to participate in decision-making in general," says Caroline Leeson, a senior lecturer in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Plymouth in England. But the more relevant question, she argues, is whether adults are willing for the kids to be involved in making decisions about their own lives. Making use of stories, games and other activities to probe the experiences of four young people who had been in the care of the local authority, Leeson found that having no opportunity to make such decisions produced feelings of helplessness, low self-esteem and poor confidence; she suggests that the care system could be constructed differently so as to allow their voices - and the voices of much younger children - to be heard.

[Based on Caroline Leeson, "My life in care: experiences of non-participation in decision-making processes," in Child & Family Social Work., Volume 12, Issue 3, Pages 268-277, August 2007. http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/cfs]

6.   Homeless, not clueless or helpless

Most research, not surprisingly, has focused on the dangers and problems that homeless young people are up against. But researchers in Texas decided to look at what street kids  have going for them€¦a "strength-based" perspective that has nothing to do with Pollyanna; the idea is to build on what's already there - for example, by using the information to help providers assess the needs and improve the long-term chances of the youth population that they serve.  In interviews with seven focus groups, made up of homeless young people between the ages of 18 and 24, three important assets were identified: "street smarts," personal strengths (resilience, self-confidence), and informal resources.

[Based on Kimberly Bender, Sanna J. Thompson, Holly McManus, Janet Lantry, and Patrick M. Flynn, "Capacity for survival: Exploring strengths of homeless street youth," in Child & Youth Care Forum: An Independent Journal of Day and Residential Child and Youth Care Practice. Vol. 36, Number 1, Pages 25-42, February 2007; published online January 8, 2007.]

7.  Kids are us

Many great and liberating ideas came out of the Enlightenment. But some were a lot less enlightening than the best of them. Take the idea of what the French theorist Michel Foucault called otherness, which for centuries allowed Western Europeans to rationalize their colonization and enslavement of other human beings on the grounds that "they" not only weren't like "us" but were in fact inferior: not as rational or intelligent, not as civilized, not as morally developed. It's now widely acknowledged that the attribution of otherness to the people of Asia and Africa was scientifically as well as ethically  unjustified.

Now comes a Canadian scholar to argue that current practices in the field of child and youth work are rooted in the discredited notion of otherness - the otherness of children. Hans Skott-Myhre argues that it is "at the heart of many of the frustrations which take place between children and adults" and that its perpetuation "obscures the wisdom and knowledge produced by youth and adults when they think and create together."  What to do? Skott-Myhre proposes that adult youth workers "must cease attempting to dominate and control young people" and that to do this adults must question and take down their own ways of knowing.

[Based on  Hans Skott-Myhre, "Radical youth work: Becoming visible," in Child and Youth Care Forum, An Independent Journal of Day and Residential Child and Youth Care Practice.Vol. 35, Number 3, Pages 210-229, June 2006.

Other journals of interest: Child Abuse and Neglect, Child Abuse Review, Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, Child: Care, Children and Youth Services Review, Health and Development, Childright, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, The Milbank Quarterly, Pediatrics International, Social Work, Social Work Research