Are you prepared to deliver effective services to a wide range of families and family situations? Diverse Families, Competent Families provides human service professionals with a portrait of the real lives and practical challenges of our nation's families as they face a new millennium. It examines family adaptation and competence in a variety of contexts and situations such as, day-to-day issues of coping and survival, as well as major milestones such as sending children off to school and becoming a caregiver for a family member. This unique book also spans multiple levels of families’existence, examining home, school, and the larger community to provide you with an understanding of the societal dynamics that can have an influence on families. With Diverse Families, Competent Families, you'll explore: the need to reexamine the ways that single parent families are viewed, and the risks inherent in over-generalizing about this type of family ways that men can make the most of their experience as fathers the relationship between parents’perceptions of teacher behavior and how willing they are to become involved at school the ways in which changes or disruptions in a family's functioning can influence their children's academic skills the results of an innovative intervention for “sandwiched” generation mothers who must simultaneously care for an older family member and attend to the needs of their own children ways to help Mexican immigrant parents feel more effective in their parenting roles In Diverse Families, Competent Families, you will discover new, and positive ways to view families, particularly ethnic minority families, low-income families, immigrant families, and families who are coping with specific life stressors such as financial loss, unemployment, divorce, and death.

The CRAF-E4 Family Engagement Model: Building Practitioners’ Competence to Work with Diverse Families lays out how mental health practitioners can best engage parents in their children's education for the child’s best educational outcome. The book presents several different engagement strategies, allowing for differences in socio-political, cultural, and parental beliefs and understandings. Topics include information from early childhood, family processes, efficacy, racial socialization, and social capital. While of interest to educators and parents, this book is written primarily for the clinician, in particular clinicians working with vulnerable child and parent populations, who may be struggling with learning or developmental disabilities. Concise, practical guide Useful to psychologists, educators, and parents

"Knowing and Serving Diverse Families provides relevant content, discussion, issues, and strategies needed by teachers and others in the field of human services to understand and work with today's diverse families. Several chapters in this book provide insights into working with culturally and ethnically diverse families, such as African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, Arab American, Native American, and others. Other chapters are instrumental in informing professionals about diverse family structures, including single teenage parents, divorced single-parent families, stepfamilies, families with special needs, and gay and lesbian families."--BOOK JACKET.

This important book reconsiders the ways in which families are currently represented and addressed in school curriculum and culture. It addresses such issues as the educational needs of gay and lesbian families, the representation of adoption in children’s literature, and the experiences of homeless students and their families. Includes questions for reflection and discussion at the end of each chapter. “Other Kinds of Families will help teachers to avoid making mistakes in their work with many different types of family diversity, and will provide the knowledge and ideas important to working with all families.” —Carl A. Grant, University of Wisconsin–Madison “Teachers, researchers, and policymakers will find thought–provoking ideas, engaging stories, and practical strategies for including those who have typically been excluded from the conversation. —Sonia Nieto, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst “Other Kinds of Families will enlarge your sense of humanity, encourage you to rethink the meaning and importance of our most intimate relationships, and change forever the way you see families—everyone else's and your own.” —William Ayers, University of Illinois at Chicago

The updated second edition of this popular resource offers practical advice for working with children and families of diverse heritage. With insight from their own racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, the chapter authors contribute wisdom about the influence of different cultures on people's beliefs, values, and behaviors. Their knowledge helps professionals learn how to embrace diversity in intervention services and foster respectful and effective interactions with people of many cultures. Widely used in preservice and in-service settings, Developing Cross-Cultural Competence is invaluable as a textbook in graduate and undergraduate courses in general and special education, social work, child development, psychology, family studies, and public health and ideal as a guide for human services professionals, home visitors, paraprofessionals, and program administrators who work with children with disabilities.

This expertly written book provides an accessible framework for culturally competent practice with children and families in child maltreatment cases. Numerous workable strategies and concrete examples are presented to help readers address cultural concerns at each stage of the assessment and intervention process. Professionals and students learn new ways of thinking about their own cultural viewpoints as they gain critical skills for maximizing the accuracy of assessments for physical and sexual abuse; overcoming language barriers in parent and child interviews; respecting families' values and beliefs while ensuring children's safety; creating a welcoming agency environment; and more.

Family Life Education with Diverse Populations is a T2 for courses in Family Life Education. Family Studies and Social Work students often go through the additional certification of becoming Family Life Educators (FLEs). As a family life educator, the student will help educate families in and outside the traditional classroom environment on how to strengthen relationships in the home and foster positive individual, couple and family development. Such education comprises many topics, including marriage education, parenting skills, anger management, to strategies in adjusting to divorce. This book takes the content delivered in courses on FLE a step further by examining and presenting key strategies for working with diverse populations. Diverse is defined broadly in terms of race and ethnicity, but also by setting, such as military families, rural families, families with loved ones in prison, and more. The book is unique in defining the group and presenting their strengths, and then prescribing treatments and strategies for working with each group. In addition, the book takes an evidence based practice approach and demonstrates proven strategies in working with the populations listed above. Sharon M. Ballard, Ph.D., CFLE, CFCS: is an Associate Professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Relations at East Carolina University. Alan C. Taylor, Ph.D. CFLE: is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Child Development and Family Relations at East Carolina University.