Adolescents: Pregnancy
Kathleen A. Rounds and Traci L. Wike
Although rates of adolescent pregnancy have exhibited a downward trend since 1991, the United States continues to have a significantly higher rate than other industrialized nations. ...
More
Adoption: Overview
Richard P. Barth
Adoption of children from foster care and international adoptions have accelerated since 1987. Federal policy changes have markedly increased the termination of parental rights and ...
More
Adoption: Intercountry
Karen Smith Rotabi
The practice of intercountry adoption is considered from a historical framework, beginning with World War II to other conflicts and the global dynamics of child circulation for adoption. ...
More
Adoption: Lesbian and Gay Adoptive Parents
Abbie E. Goldberg and April Moyer
Adoption by lesbian and gay parents is becomingly increasingly common. This entry presents an overview of the limited research that has focused on lesbian and gay adoptive parents. ...
More
Adult Protective Services
Patricia Brownell and Joanne Marlatt Otto
Adult Protective Services (APS) are empowered by states and local communities to respond to reports and cases of vulnerable adult abuse, neglect, and self-neglect. While incorporating ...
More
African Americans: Practice Interventions
Sharon E. Moore
African Americans number about 35 million or 12% of the U.S. population. Their life expectancy is lower than that of White Americans, and despite the educational gains made since ...
More
Aging: Practice Interventions
Lenard W. Kaye
Social workers address older adult issues at all levels of service planning, policy-making, and delivery and across a wide range of community and institutional settings. While various ...
More
Child Abuse and Neglect
Susan J. Wells and Geoff Johnson
The true extent of child abuse and neglect is unknown but reports to state agencies indicate over 3 million reports concerning maltreatment of over 6 million children are made each year. ...
More
Child Care Services
Laura Lein
Child care services, enabling parents to commit themselves to paid employment while providing a supervised environment for their children, have a long and complex history in the United ...
More
Child Support
Delanie P. Pope and Joseph Kozakiewicz
Child support is the legal mechanism requiring parents to share in the economic support of their children. Under the law, parents are obligated to support their children regardless of ...
More
Domestic Violence in the LGBT Community
Betty Jo Barrett
Since the mid 1980s, a growing body of theoretical and empirical literature has examined the existence of intimate partner violence (IPV) in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) ...
More
Early Childhood Home Visiting
Melissa Lim Brodowski, Jacqueline Counts, and Aislinn Conrad-Hiebner
This chapter provides an overview of early-childhood home-visiting programs and offers a brief summary of the research, policy, and practice issues. The first section defines home visiting ...
More
Economic Insecurity and Family Well-Being
Janice Berry-Edwards
Economic insecurity and family Well-Being is a growing concern for American society. With the dramatic changes that occurred following the “great recession” of 2008, and the lingering ...
More
End-of-Life Decisions
Ellen L. Csikai
As medical technology advances producing the ability to prolong life almost indefinitely, individuals and families are asked to make increasingly complex choices about what treatments best ...
More
Family: Overview
Sadye L. M. Logan
Families in almost all societies are viewed as the basic unit for coordinating personal reproduction and the redistribution of goals within the larger societal context of production and ...
More
Family: Practice Interventions
Mikal N. Rasheed and Janice Matthews Rasheed
This entry traces the historical, conceptual, and theoretical development of social work practice with families, beginning with the Charity Organization Society and the Settlement House ...
More
Family Caregiving
Sandra Owens and Letha A. Chadiha
There is evidence that family caregiving in the United States has been increasing at an unprecedented rate as a result of various societal issues. This entry provides a summary of the ...
More
Family Estrangement
Kylie Agllias
Family estrangement—a concept similar to emotional cutoff in Bowen family systems theory—is the unsatisfactory physical or emotional distancing between at least two family members. It is ...
More