Towards Positive Systems of Child and Family Welfare: International Comparisons of Child Protection, Family Service, and Community Caring Systems

Michael Ungar is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at
Dalhousie University. He is the author of Nurturing Hidden Resilience in
Troubled Youth.

This collection of papers follows from presentations at a 2002
Partnerships for Children and Families Project conference. Freymond and
Cameron have brought together an international roster of scholars who
emphasize a holistic approach to child and family welfare though the
comparison of systems of caring across different countries. While all
authors come from Western nations, the scope of the chapters themselves
is broad in terms of their representation of minority population
perspectives: Aboriginal, Maori, and in many cases the most
disadvantaged families in countries like England, the Netherlands, and
Sweden.

Critically, the editors have tried to demonstrate that there are at
least three broad approaches to child welfare: child protection, family
service, and community caring. Each approach is explored and contrasted
across borders with no one approach being put forth as more right than
another. The volume will certainly be of interest to scholars in this
area of study and students in advanced social work courses. The
introductory and concluding chapters by the editors offer coherent
bookends that tidy up the disparate points of view introduced in
individual chapters. Overall, this is an interesting work that fills a
gap in our cross-cultural understanding of the fit between systems of
care and the contextual factors that shape the appropriateness of
different models of intervention.