Knowing And Serving Diverse Families

"Knowing and Serving Diverse Families provides relevant content, discussion, issues, and strategies needed by teachers and others in the field of human services to understand and work with today's diverse families. Several chapters in this book provide insights into working with culturally and ethnically diverse families, such as African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Native American, and others. Other chapters are instrumental in informing professionals about diverse family structures, including single teenage parents, divorced single-parent families, stepfamilies, families with special needs, and gay and lesbian families."--BOOK JACKET.

A funny, heartfelt board book championing same-sex parents, inclusive families and the magic of reading! Set off on a series of incredible adventures with an adorable family as the stories they read burst into fantastical life. Battle dragons, dodge dinosaurs, zoom to the moon and explore the world in a hot-air balloon, before winding down in a wonderfully cosy bedtime ending. The bouncy, rhyming read-aloud text is brought to life by bestselling, award-winning illustrator Garry Parsons, illustrator of The Dinosaur that Pooped series. 'This rhyming picture book celebrating same-sex parents is a gentle and sweet read . . . a wonderful celebration of adoption and the different shapes a family can take!' BookTrust

Today's mental health practitioners face a rapidly changing clientele. Divorce, remarriage, multiracial marriages, different types of adoption, openly gay and lesbian relationships--all have significantly altered the nature and composition of families. An indispensable classroom text and an important resource for clinicians working in private practice, managed care, and other settings, this book insightfully examines a range of healthy families with creative family structures.

Family Life Education with Diverse Populations is a T2 for courses in Family Life Education. Family Studies and Social Work students often go through the additional certification of becoming Family Life Educators (FLEs). As a family life educator, the student will help educate families in and outside the traditional classroom environment on how to strengthen relationships in the home and foster positive individual, couple and family development. Such education comprises many topics, including marriage education, parenting skills, anger management, to strategies in adjusting to divorce. This book takes the content delivered in courses on FLE a step further by examining and presenting key strategies for working with diverse populations. Diverse is defined broadly in terms of race and ethnicity, but also by setting, such as military families, rural families, families with loved ones in prison, and more. The book is unique in defining the group and presenting their strengths, and then prescribing treatments and strategies for working with each group. In addition, the book takes an evidence based practice approach and demonstrates proven strategies in working with the populations listed above. Sharon M. Ballard, Ph.D., CFLE, CFCS: is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Relations at East Carolina University. Alan C. Taylor, Ph.D. CFLE: is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Relations at East Carolina University.

Candlewick relaunches a modern classic for this generation with a beautifully illustrated edition. Heather’s favorite number is two. She has two arms, two legs, and two pets. And she also has two mommies. When Heather goes to school for the first time, someone asks her about her daddy, but Heather doesn’t have a daddy. Then something interesting happens. When Heather and her classmates all draw pictures of their families, not one drawing is the same. It doesn’t matter who makes up a family, the teacher says, because “the most important thing about a family is that all the people in it love one another.” This delightful edition for a new generation of young readers features fresh illustrations by Laura Cornell and an updated story by Lesléa Newman.

Today's mental health clinicians face a rapidly changing clientele. Divorce, remarriage, multiracial marriages, different types of adoption, openly gay and lesbian relationships\m\all have significantly altered the nature and composition of families. At the same time, clinicians in today's managed care environment are working with an increasingly diverse clientele. Addressing an important need, this illuminating volume is designed to help practitioners work effectively with diversity in this challenging new environment. It confronts myths and stereotypes about what is considered "normal" and what constitutes a "family," insightfully examines a range of healthy families with creative family structures, and expands our notions about how families work.

In Diverse Families, Desirable Schools, Mira Debs offers a richly detailed study of public Montessori schools, which make up the largest group of progressive schools in the public sector. As public Montessori schools expand rapidly as alternatives to traditional public schools, the story of these schools, Debs points out, is a microcosm of the broader conflicts around public school choice. Drawing on historical research, interviews with public Montessori educators, and ethnographic case studies, Debs explores the forces that pull intentionally diverse, progressive schools toward elitism. At the heart of Debs’s book is a thoughtful analysis of the notion of “fit” between parents and schools—an idea that is central to school choice, which is often marketed as an opportunity for parents to find the perfect fit for their kids. By exploring parents’ varied motivations in choosing these schools and observing how families experience—or fail to experience—a “good fit” after having chosen a particular school, Debs makes an original contribution to the literature on school choice and sheds light on the dilemmas entailed in maintaining diversity in progressive charter and magnet schools.

Weaving together personal stories, history, and analysis, Same Family, Different Colors explores the myriad ways skin-color politics affect family dynamics in the United States. Colorism and color bias—the preference for or presumed superiority of people based on the color of their skin—is a pervasive and damaging but rarely openly discussed phenomenon. In this unprecedented book, Lori L. Tharps explores the issue in African American, Latino, Asian American, and mixed-race families and communities by weaving together personal stories, history, and analysis. The result is a compelling portrait of the myriad ways skin-color politics affect family dynamics in the United States. Tharps, the mother of three mixed-race children with three distinct skin colors, uses her own family as a starting point to investigate how skin-color difference is dealt with. Her journey takes her across the country and into the lives of dozens of diverse individuals, all of whom have grappled with skin-color politics and speak candidly about experiences that sometimes scarred them. From a Latina woman who was told she couldn’t be in her best friend’s wedding photos because her dark skin would “spoil” the pictures, to a light-skinned African American man who spent his entire childhood “trying to be Black,” Tharps illuminates the complex and multifaceted ways that colorism affects our self-esteem and shapes our lives and relationships. Along with intimate and revealing stories, Tharps adds a historical overview and a contemporary cultural critique to contextualize how various communities and individuals navigate skin-color politics. Groundbreaking and urgent, Same Family, Different Colors is a solution-seeking journey to the heart of identity politics, so that this more subtle “cousin to racism,” in the author’s words, will be exposed and confronted.

Family engagement varies in education literature and often includes collaboration, involvement, and partnership. The term “family in schools” has changed to include extended family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, and others who interact with the child, such as step-parents, caregivers, and neighbors. Family engagement is a practice, an interactive process, and a goal-oriented relationship involving professionals and families, allowing families to share their perspectives about their children, their learning, and their customs to improve their children's education. Advocating and Empowering Diverse Families of Students With Disabilities Through Meaningful Engagement provides the knowledge, skills, and dispositions for effective engagements of all families with children in special education. With recent changes in student population diversity among those enrolling in special education, the diversity of family compositions in the school system is also evolving. Covering topics such as laws and legal infrastructure, special education, and family engagement, this book is ideal for classroom teachers, administrators, researchers, and students in education programs.

Comprehensive history of the Children’s Bureau from 1912-2012 in eBook form that shares the legacy of this landmark agency that established the first Federal Government programs, research and social reform initiatives aimed to improve the safety, permanency and well-being of children, youth and families. In addition to bios of agency heads and review of legislation and publications, this important book provides a critical look at the evolution of the Nation and its treatment of children as it covers often inspiring and sometimes heart-wrenching topics such as: child labor; the Orphan Trains, adoption and foster care; infant and maternal mortality and childhood diseases; parenting, infant and child care education; the role of women's clubs and reformers; child welfare standards; Aid to Dependent Children; Depression relief; children of migrants and minorities (African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans), including Indian Boarding Schools and Indian Adoption Program; disabled children care; children in wartime including support of military families and World War II refugee children; Juvenile delinquency; early childhood education Head Start; family planning; child abuse and neglect; natural disaster recovery; and much more. Child welfare and related professionals, legislators, educators, researchers and advocates, university school of social work faculty and staff, libraries, and others interested in social work related to children, youth and families, particularly topics such as preventing child abuse and neglect, foster care, and adoption will be interested in this comprehensive history of the Children's Bureau that has been funded by the U.S. Federal Government since 1912.