Parenting Assessments in Child Welfare Cases: A Practical Guide

Summary

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A refrain throughout the book is the reminder that the central question in parenting assessments is: Can this parent meet the needs of this particular child; Once this is understood then the complexity of the work becomes apparent. The task goes beyond assessing the parent to considering and assessing the child's needs, the relationships and interactions between child, parent, and other caregivers, as well as the broader contextual aspects such as social and community supports, income, occupation, etc. After taking us through preliminary consideration of the common issues involved, the authors use the next five chapters to cover all the factors to be taken into consideration. I appreciated the fact that the two chapters on child factors deal separately with normal or typical child development and specific atypical factors. While coverage of the full range of child development knowledge that any assessor should possess would warrant a text book in itself, it is useful to have the summary information given here. It includes the central and key issue of attachment as well as physical and emotional care and the child's emotional, behavioural, and cognitive development. The chapter on atypical development covers temperament, developmental disorders of various kinds, alcohol- and drug-impacted children, as well as attention and learning problems.

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Extract

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Parenting Assessments in Child Welfare Cases: A Practical Guide

TERRY D. PEZZOT-PEARCE and JOHN PEARCE Parenting Assessments in Child Welfare cases: A Practical Guide Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2004, 398 pages (ISBN 0-80208-654-3, CDN$39.95 Paperback; ISBN 0-80208-702-7, CDN$75.00 Cloth)

This book sets out to fulfil four major goals that can be summarized as follows: 1) presenting a model for comprehensive parenting assessments; 2) setting out the ...

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