From “Child Saving” to “Child Development”?

Abstract

What next for the field we now know as “child welfare”? Federal pressure, federal funding, court actions, periodic citizen advocacy and occasional citizen or agency recourse to the courts have created a system of sorts, a system constantly undergoing change or viewed as poorly implemented. Now, the leadership of our public social services, supportive citizens and foundations, policy researchers, and, ultimately, federal, state and local governments need to think ahead strategically. Their potentially field-altering question becomes: how are we to be organized as private and public sectors around youth concerns? What kind of evolution of child welfare are we to advocate and implement? How are we to organize, finance, conduct and empower what is indisputably an important branch of social work? Pursued far enough, the question becomes: does it make optimum sense that the child welfare systems of London, Washington, Minneapolis, and San Francisco serve as the models for cities such as Harare, Kabul, New Delhi, and Johannesburg?