Child and Family Advocacy ― Bridging the Gaps Between Research, Practice, and Policy

Current statistics on child abuse, neglect, poverty, and hunger shock the conscience—doubly so as societal structures set up to assist families are failing them. More than ever, the responsibility of the helping professions extends from aiding individuals and families to securing social justice for the larger community.

With this duty in clear sight, the contributors to Child and Family Advocacy assert that advocacy is neither a dying art nor a lost cause but a vital platform for improving children's lives beyond the scope of clinical practice. This uniquely practical reference builds an ethical foundation that defines advocacy as a professional competency and identifies skills that clinicians and researchers can use in advocating at the local, state and federal levels. Models of the advocacy process coupled with first-person narratives demonstrate how professionals across disciplines can lobby for change.

Among the topics discussed:

• Promoting children's mental health: collaboration and public understanding.
• Health reform as a bridge to health equity.
• Preventing child maltreatment: early intervention and public education
• Changing juvenile justice practice and policy.
• A multi-level framework for local policy development and implementation.
• When evidence and values collide: preventing sexually transmitted infections.
• Lessons from the legislative history of federal special education law.

Child and Family Advocacy is an essential resource for researchers, professionals and graduate students in clinical child and school psychology, family studies, public health, developmental psychology, social work and social policy.