Examining individual‐level academic risk and protective factors for foster youth: School engagement, behaviors, self‐esteem, and social skills

Brittany P. Mihalec‐Adkins & Morgan E. Cooley - Child & Family Social Work

The goals of the present study were (a) to explore relationships amongst various child‐level correlates of school engagement and problem behaviors—namely, self‐esteem and social skills—and (b) to respectively investigate the protective potential of self‐esteem and social skills in the association between school engagement and behavior problems that threaten educational trajectories.

Beginning the “never-ending” learning process: Training experiences of newly-hired child welfare workers

Melissa Radey & Lauren Stanley - Children and Youth Services Review

This study used qualitative telephone interviews with participants sampled from a statewide cohort of newly-hired, frontline child welfare workers. The authors used thematic analysis to consider participants' training experiences and the conditions that facilitated meaning.

Child Protection With Muslim Communities: Considerations For Non-Muslim-Based Orthodoxies/Paradigms in Child Welfare and Social Work

Patrick O’Leary, Mohamad Abdalla, Aisha Hutchinson, Jason Squire, Amy Young - The British Journal of Social Work

The purpose of this article is to address at a broad level the issue of how overarching concepts of child protection and Islam influence social work practice with Muslim communities.

Could I do something like that? Recruiting and training foster carers for teenagers “at risk” of or experiencing child sexual exploitation

Lucie Shuker & Jenny Pearce - Child & Family Social Work

Using evidence from the evaluation of specialist foster care provision and a child sexual exploitation (CSE) training course for foster carers, this paper [from the Child & Family Social Work special issue on teenagers in foster care] considers how training might be used to widen the pool of potential foster carers for children affected by CSE and identifies qualities displayed by effective carers.

Providing a secure base for LGBTQ young people in foster care: The role of foster carers

Gillian Schofield, Jeanette Cossar, Emma Ward, Birgit Larsson, Pippa Belderson - Child & Family Social Work

This open access paper [from the Child & Family Social Work special issue on teenagers in foster care] reports on findings from the first study of LGBTQ young people in care in England and focuses on the nature of foster carers' experiences and perspectives on caring for LGBTQ young people.

Supporting unaccompanied asylum‐seeking young people: The experience of foster care

Jim Wade - Child & Family Social Work

This paper [from the Child & Family Social Work special issue on teenagers in foster care] reports findings from the first UK study into the experiences of unaccompanied asylum‐seeking young people in the UK, describing issues arising from initial assessment and preparation for fostering and the ways in which young people and foster carers adjusted to their lives together.