ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors believe that the raising of private troubles to public social concerns is at the heart of what social work should be about in child welfare. They see social workers as intimately involved in the policy process: not merely as passive purveyors of services and benefits, but as policy practitioners, promoters of strength-based social policy, and active agents of change. The authors find it useful to think less in "us" and "them" terms and more in terms of what the social work great, Charlotte Towles, referred to as common human needs. They follow replete with examples of the challenges, dilemmas, and strains involved in many arenas of direct service in child welfare: family foster care, family-based or family preservation services, residential services, special-needs adoption, and services to abused and neglected children and their families. "The power to maintain a decent family living standard is a primary essential in child welfare," said Julia Lathrop in 1919.
