Innovative Approaches in Working with Children and Youth


Book Description

Explore the unique social and educational laboratory known as the Israeli kibbutz! This valuable book examines state-of-the-art innovations in services for children and youth happening today in the kibbutz in Israel. It brings to light the latest developments in integrated services for clients inside and outside the kibbutz society, services for detached and troubled individuals and groups from outside the kibbutz, and regional services that include kibbutz and non-kibbutz children who live at home while attending kibbutz institutions. According to editor Yuval Dror, ”Since the mid-1980s, the kibbutz movement has experienced a deep social and economic crisis, but despite this negative influence on the semi-private kibbutz educational system, the uniqueness of ’communal/cooperative education’ has been maintained, and has even grown. The openness of the kibbutz to its neighbors from non-kibbutz settlements in the 1980s and 1990s enabled rural areas to succeed in fruitful cooperation with the kibbutz. These experiences are detailed here.” In Innovative Approaches In Working with Children and Youth: New Lessons from the Kibbutz you’ll learn about youth aliya groups (youth societies), the Project for the Education of Israeli Children in the Kibbutz Movement, the NA’ALEH Program, and the Zweig Center for Special Education at Oranim. This unique book brings you: a comparison of two kibbutz secondary boarding schools with residential facilities in different forms a look at a unique way of absorbing young Russian immigrants in kibbutzim and other residential settings an examination of integration practice in kibbutz day schools a discussion of how Kfar Tikva serves disabled adults . . . and much more! Educators and their students, youth workers, and social workers, as well as anyone with an interest in the unique learning opportunities offered by the kibbutz system will find Innovative Approaches In Working with Children and Youth: New Lessons from the Kibbutz an invaluable tool.




Teaching Social Skills to Children and Youth


Book Description

In this guide are the tools needed to develop appropriate social skills interventions for young children through adolescents and crossing a broad spectrum of backgrounds and abilities. This work is unique in its emphasis on building ne w adaptive, prosocial behaviors. The editors have combined an overview of the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of social skills instruction with a broad range of practical applications, examples, strategies, and suggestions for intervention. Includes extensive, up to date coverage of early childhood, aggressive, severely disabled, adolescent, and culturally diverse populations. Explains how social skills instruction can be used to prevent problems as well as help children overcome existing ones. Shows how to assess the characteristics of learners and their environment in order to tailor instruction to their needs. Provides a wide range of strategies, examples, and practical suggestions -- including behavioral, cogni tive, and affective approaches. School Psychologists, Special Education Teachers, and Clinical Psychologists. A Longwood Professional Book Also available in casebound: ISBN: 0-205-16073-5 Title Code: H60734. The previous edition ISBN is: 0-205-14299-0.




Children and Youth as Subjects, Objects, Agents


Book Description

This textbook showcases innovative approaches to the interdisciplinary field of childhood and youth studies, examining how young people in a wide range of contemporary and historical contexts around the globe live their young lives as subjects, objects, and agents. The diverse contributions examine how children and youth are simultaneously constructed: as individual subjects through social processes and culturally-specific discourses; as objects of policy intervention and other adult power plays; and also as active agents who act on their world and make meaning even amidst conditions of social, political, and economic marginalization. In addition, the book is centrally engaged with questions about how researchers take into consideration children’s and young people’s own conceptions of themselves and how we conceptualize child and youth potentials for agency at different ages and stages of growing up. Each chapter discusses substantive research but also engages in self-reflection about methodology, positionality, and/or disciplinarity, thus making the volume especially useful for teaching. This book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including childhood studies, youth studies, girls’ studies, development studies, research methods, sociology, anthropology, education, history, geography, public policy, cultural studies, gender and women’s studies and global studies.




Child and Youth Participation in Policy, Practice and Research


Book Description

This book showcases rights based participatory approaches to policy-making, practice and research with children and youth. Throughout its three parts, the book conceptualises a rights-based participatory approach; showcases constructive and innovative rights based participatory approaches across the domains of research, policy and practice; and interrogates the challenges and complexities in the implementation of such an approach. In recent times, Ireland has been at the forefront of promoting and implementing participatory approaches to policy-making, practice and research focused on children and youth. This edited volume is a timely opportunity to capture previously undocumented learning generated from a wide range of innovative participatory initiatives implemented in Ireland. In capturing this learning, real world guidance will be provided to international policy-makers, practitioners and researchers working with children and youth. This book is essential reading for those interested in a rights based participatory approach, for those who want to appropriately and meaningfully engage children and youth in research, and for those wishing to maximise the contribution of children and youth in policy-making.




Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth


Book Description

Use a strengths perspective for working with your younger clients! Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth: A Strengths and Well-Being Model presents new insights into successfully working with children by concentrating on their capabilities and resilience. This book explores the continuum of children’s needs and challenges from early childhood through adolescence. This text also supports child-centered and strengths-oriented approaches to intervention with children and introduces specific strategies for maximizing pro-social behaviors, self-concept, learning, and positive peer relationships in children at home, at school, and in the community. Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth shows how children’s rights have slowly evolved over many years, from children’s status as property in the 1600s to the twentieth-century innovations that give a child a specific legal status with a certain amount of freedom and self-determination. By emphasizing the self-concept and self-esteem guidelines outlined by this book, social workers, mental health specialists, and childcare professionals can help children transition into healthy adults, despite hardships, disabilities, or parent negligence. Chapters highlighting interview and assessment techniques as well as media-directed, creative child therapies will enhance your counseling and intervention practices. Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth provides you with insight on: the relationships between children and family environmentfrom two-parent families to foster families child socialization and peer relationshipsin school and around the community adolescencegender roles, ethnic and racial diversity, sexual orientation, and adult transitioning educational needsteacher expectations, special education, diversity, home schooling and more! The strengths perspective is not always included in traditional child welfare and children’s practice texts, and this textbook fills that gap for working with younger clients. Children in child welfare, educational, mental health, family service, and recreational settings will all benefit from the inclusion of Mental Health Practice with Children and Youth: A Strengths and Well-Being Model in your work. Augmented with case scenarios and studies, empirical findings, and questions for discussion in every chapter, this book will help child service professionals as well as university faculty and students.




Working with Children and Teenagers Using Solution Focused Approaches


Book Description

Solution focused approaches offer proven ways of helping children overcome a whole range of difficulties, from academic problems to mental health issues, by helping them to identify their strengths and achievements. Based on solution focused practice principles, this book illustrates communication skills and playful techniques for working with all children and young people, regardless of any health, learning or development need. It demonstrates how the approach can capture children's views, wishes and worries, and can assist them in identifying their strengths and abilities. The approach encourages positive decision-making, and helps children to overcome challenges, achieve their goals and reach their full potential. The book is packed with case examples, practical strategies, and practice activities. This valuable text will be of great use to a range of practitioners working with children and young people, including social workers, youth workers, counsellors, teachers and nurses.




Researching with Children and Young People


Book Description

′This text will be of great use to postgraduate researchers in education, social work and nursing, and any practitioner involved in carrying out research with children and young people′ - CPD Update ′[T]here is a sense of newness and innovation about the book, whereby the reader is treated to insight into the life and work of collaborators who wrote each case study....[T]he book is highly accessible for students at graduate and undergraduate level, for example BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies students′ - ESCalate Researching with Children and Young People covers every stage of the process of doing a research project, from research design and data collection, through to analysis and writing up. The book is divided into three sections, in which the authors cover: - Introducing research and consultation with children and young people - Collecting and analysing data - Whole-project issues. Each chapter includes activities, discussion questions, tips and extended case studies to help the reader to engage with the material and investigate the practical implications. This text will be of great use to postgraduate researchers in education, social work and nursing, and any practitioner involved in carrying out research with children and young people.




With Children and Youth


Book Description

With Children and Youth provides a snapshot of emerging theories and perspectives in the field of child and youth care across North America. Well-known scholars and researchers present new and innovative critical perspectives, written in a provocative manner and reflecting outside-the-box thinking. The book examines from scholarly and practical viewpoints the purpose of child and youth care practice, relational practice, post-modern approaches to thinking about theory and practice, and new and innovative thinking about the professionalization and accreditation of the discipline itself. Some chapters merge thinking about child and youth care with esoteric and literary prose; others use humour and satire as a way to represent both foundational and entirely new directions in the field. With Children and Youth provides no set conclusions or findings about the field; instead, it guides the reader to spaces of controversy, contention, and opportunities for innovation and change. Child and youth care practice and theory, it is argued, is based fundamentally on engagement across generations, cultures, and social positions, and this book exemplifies precisely that.




Innovative Approaches to Supporting Families of Young Children


Book Description

This invaluable reference introduces successful strengths-based programs for aiding families of young children in critical social contexts: family, school, community, and policy. The wide range of systems/contextual approaches described here are based in current understanding of children’s development, stress and resilience in families, cultural competence, and the two-generational approach to intervention. Research-based examples across early care and early learning platforms illustrate the links between parental protective factors and children’s academic and social outcomes, and between family stability and larger social goals. By supporting parents and children equally, the contributors assert, these interventions more fully address developmental and family issues than programs that mainly serve one generation or the other. Included in the coverage:• Parent and community focused approaches to supporting parents of young children: the Family Networks Project./div• Honoring parenting values, expectations, and approaches across cultures.• Building young children's executive functions at home and in early care and education settings.• Promoting early childhood development in the pediatric medical home.• Neighborhood approaches to supporting families of young children.• Public policy strategies to promote the well-being of families with young children. Innovative Approaches for Supporting Parents of Young Children benefits professionals and practitioners working to support families of young children, particularly those interested in social work, psychology, public policy, and public health.




Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs


Book Description

Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs provides a detailed description of techniques and rich stories of how social workers, psychologists, counselors, and child and youth care workers can help young people become more resilient. With ample case studies and fascinating explanations of research, Dr. Ungar shows why we need to work just as hard changing the environments that surround children as we do changing children themselves. Building on lessons learned from clinical, community and residential settings, Dr. Ungar discusses 20 skills that can enhance the effectiveness of frontline mental health services. Along with descriptions of the skills necessary to talk with clients about the factors that put their mental health at risk, Working with Children and Youth with Complex Needs also presents systemic practices clinicians can use in their everyday work. Engaging with children’s extended family, addressing issues of community violence, racism and homophobia, and helping parents and teachers understand children’s maladaptive coping strategies as sometimes necessary are among the many practical strategies that are discussed which clinicians can use to enhance and sustain the therapeutic value of their work.