Anita Weinberg (Loyola University Chicago School of Law) has recently posted to SSRN her paper, Seeing the Forest through the Trees: Rethinking the Meaning of ‘Child Welfare.’ Here is the abstract:
This essay, part of a series of sociological autobiographies, briefly reviews the author's experiences of where federal law has fallen short of its vision to serve children and families. It concludes with three strategies that tie together some of what should have been learned over the years: (1) to build policy based on evidence-based practices and not as a response to cries for immediate change, (2) to go beyond the numbers and use data to understand the implications of policies and inform what will better serve children and families, and (3) to focus on the root causes and not symptoms that bring children and their families into our child welfare system.