ABSTRACT
Social service interventions that incorporate the principles and methods of informal social supports or self-help pose a paradox—perhaps even a dilemma—for the field of child welfare. On the one hand, there is ample research evidence for the effectiveness of these informal methods of helping and for their relevance to child welfare populations. In theory and in practice, informal social supports can complement and even improve the effectiveness of formal child welfare services. On the other hand, these informal methods of providing assistance are based on paradigms, explaining the nature of the problems facing many child welfare clients and the appropriate responses to their difficulties, that are different from those used by most child welfare service providers. There is also little doubt that many social support, social network, and self-help interventions do not accord formal child welfare service providers the central role in the helping process to which they have become accustomed. In practice, it is evident that informal helping strategies remain largely ignored in child welfare programming (Cameron, Holmberg, & Rothery, 1983; Cameron & Rothery, 1985) and the extent of their compatibility with child welfare bureaucracies is unknown. Nonetheless, the thesis of this chapter is that there are a range of small-scale informal social support interventions that are potentially accessible to child welfare service personnel and are demonstrably useful for child welfare clients.
