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Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century
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Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century

Edited by:
  • Richard B. McKenzie - Politics and Society, University of California, Irvine, University of California, Irvine, USA

September 1998 | 334 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

With welfare reform at the top of the U.S. Congress agenda, the orphanage debate has resurfaced. The current child welfare system is flawed, operating to the detriment of tens of thousands of children. Foster care, intended to act as a temporary solution, has become inadequate permanent care. While adoption is a solution for some children, many children are difficult to place or legally unavailable for permanent placement. Editor Richard B. McKenzie contends that the resurgence of private orphanages or children's homes will become an option for those children. Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century reviews the policy reforms necessary for these homes to become reliable solutions for many of the nation's disadvantaged and abused children. This edited volume includes entirely new works and maintains continuity and cohesiveness as it explores a variety of topics ranging from judicial issues, child maltreatment, history of orphanages, regulation and funding, and solutions for reform. McKenzie, who grew up in an orphanage in the 1950s, includes the first and only large-scale survey of orphanage alumni, involving 1,600 respondents. He found that as a group, they outpaced their counterparts in the general population by significant margins on nearly all levels, including education, income, and attitude toward life.

Child welfare professionals, policymakers, sociologists, social workers, and family studies scholars will find this timely volume of great interest.


Heidi Goldsmith
Foreword
Richard B McKenzie
Rethinking Orphanages
An Introduction

 
 
PART ONE: CHILD CARE IN THE UNITED STATES
Conna Craig and Derek Herbert
The State of Child Welfare
Estella Moriarty
The Nation's Child Welfare Problems as Viewed from the Bench
Richard J Gelles
Family Preservation and Child Maltreatment
 
PART TWO: THE HISTORY AND IMPACT OF ORPHANAGES
Marvin Olasky
The Rise and Fall of American Orphanages
Ross D London
The 1994 Orphanage Debate
A Study in the Politics of Annihilation

 
Richard B McKenzie
Orphanage Alumni
How They Have Done and How They Evaluate Their Experience

 
John N McCall
Research on the Psychological Effects of Orphanage Care
A Critical Review

 
William F Shughart II and William F Chappell
Fostering the Demand for Adoptions
An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Orphanages and Foster Care on Adoptions in the United States

 
 
PART THREE: PROBLEMS IN BRINGING BACK ORPHANAGES
Karol C Boudreaux and Donald J Boudreaux
Social Security, Social Workers and the Care of Dependent Children
Dwight R Lee
A Public Choice Analysis of Child Care Dollars
The Political Bias in Favor of the Status Quo

 
Margaret McFarlane Wright
Who will Mow the Lawn at Boys Town
Child Labor Laws in an Institutional Setting

 
Michael DeBow
The Regulation of Orphanages
A Survey and Critique

 
Joseph L Maxwell III
Funding Our Children's Future
The Interplay of Funding and Regulatory Philosophies on Private Children's Homes

 
Donald Wyant, Del Bradshaw and Richard B McKenzie
The Cost of Care in Institutions and Families
 
PART FOUR: THE PATH TO REFORM
Richard B McKenzie
Rethinking Orphanages for the 21st Century
A Search for Reform of the Nation's Child Welfare System

 

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