Worker Health and Safety Center

Citing an estimated three million reports of suspected maltreatment, the U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect declared a national emergency in the field of child protection in 1990. The Board's efforts culminated in the landmark 1993 report - Neighbors Helping Neighbors - a proposal for a new comprehensive, neighborhood-based, child-centered, family-focused child protection system, which represents a significant shift in focus from "When is it justifiable to intervene coercively?" to "What can be done to prevent harm to children?" The editors of this comprehensive volume are the principal architects of the proposed prevention strategy. They have brought together leading experts on child maltreatment to address its social, cultural, and economic precursors, as well as effective prevention and treatment. Focusing on ways to strengthen neighborhoods, build connections among and within families, and bolster economic and social supports, contributors offer practical advice for the development and implementation of programs and policies to prevent harm to children. To create a society-wide safety net in which child protection becomes a part of everyday life, their work proposes an agenda for critical research and identifies concrete strategies for all those who come in contact with children. Such work served as the empirical foundation for the U.S. Advisory Board's new national strategy. Offering a picture of child abuse and neglect unmatched in its authority and breadth, this book is ideal for social workers, all mental health professionals working with children, child rights advocates, child welfare administrators, and policy makers. It is also valuable as a primary text orsecondary reading for courses dealing with strategies for preventing child abuse and neglect.

In the field of domestic violence, community collaboration hasbeen an essential part of both prevention and intervention. However, there have been vast differences in perspective, methodology, understanding, interpretations, and concerns among the variouspartners. This volume examines models of collaboration betweenpersonnel in social service agencies, women's centers, domesticviolence programs, medical and mental health settings, and lawenforcement. Techniques are detailed that allow knowledge aboutdomestic violence and primary prevention to be integrated into acommunity response by all those involved.Further, the authors describe in detail how the possibilities forcommunities to respond to domestic violence victims is based on howthese various groups perceive the victim; how an individual agencypersonally responds and how it is possible to provide safety for womenin their own homes and communities."Stopping Domestic Violence: How a Community Can Prevent SpousalAbuse" is an excellent resource for educators, social workers, public health professionals, clinicians, medical and mental healthprofessionals, and law enforcement personnel.