Child Welfare System

This course will focus on the evolution and development of child protection in the United States. The goal of the course is to provide students with an understanding of how state governments think about the adequacy/appropriateness of parenting, the safety of children, when and how child protection agencies get involved with families and what the evidence says about such involvement. We will discuss the origins and implementation of major child welfare policies and we will review practice innovations and some of the most pressing challenges facing child welfare systems today. A common theme throughout the course will be the intersection of child welfare and poverty, race, gender, identity and trauma. The course will cover policies and practices from both micro and macro perspectives and students will learn how child welfare systems collaborate (or at times fail to collaborate) with other allied systems of care (e.g. community mental health, juvenile justice, substance abuse).