Residential Care of Children

"This is an excellent collection of country case studies of residential care of children, largely in the advanced industrialized countries, their commonalities, and disparities. It provides a splendid picture of what has been the dominant form of child welfare and out-of-home care in these countries and a beginning discussion of the factors that shaped these developments."--Sheila B. Kamerman, DSW Compton Foundation Centennial Professor of Social Work and Co-Director, Institute for Child and Family Policy at Columbia University and Co-Director of the Cross-National Studies Research Program "Residential Care of Children provides a very unique contribution to the international literature about out-of-home care for children. Even though residential care for children has been criticized by practitioners, scientists, and policy makers, it remains to be a major service provision for children who are at risk throughout the world. Certainly this volume will stimulate continued scholarship that will provide more answers to the ongoing questions about providing safe and effective care to some of the world's most vulnerable children."--Ronald W. Thompson, Ph.D., Director, Boys Town National Research Institute for Child and Family Studies "Mark Courtney, Dorota Iwaniec, and their collaborators have compiled a significant contribution to the history, science and politics of residential care viewed in cross-national perspective. This impressive collection sheds light on a much discussed, but rarely rigorously studied sector of child, youth, and family services: residential care and treatment for vulnerable children. Those who plan, implement, and evaluate out-of-home care services will find much of practical value here, as well as important contextual and programmatic information on the place and purpose of residential services in varied national settings. Taken together, one hopes these insights will inform a new generation of applied research on this neglected arena of child welfare."--James K. Whittaker, Ph.D., Charles O. Cressey Endowed Professor Emeritus, University of Washington School