Ilan Katz

The welfare of children with mentally ill parents: Learning from inter-country comparisons looks at different approaches to supporting families in ten European countries and one state in Australia. These families have complex needs, and a wide range of agencies in mental health and social services may be involved. This can lead to problems of liaison and co-operation between different agencies and different disciplines. A vivid picture of service provisions and the way in which legislation can operate in different countries emerges in the book. Professionals identified common problems and effective responses which were used to build a European model of good practice. This takes into account the nature of the difficulties facing families and the strengths and weaknesses of different national systems. The model is used a basis for analysing the particular problems of the English system and the authors suggest ways forward. This important volume is essential reading for practitioners, managers, academics and students in the fields of social work, mental health and social policy. It is also a key source of reference for policy makers in mental health and social welfare, and for mental health and child welfare pressure groups.

Documenting experiences representative of all those involved in the adoption process - adoptee, adoptive and birth parent and professional, and informed by psychoanalytic and social and cultural theory perspectives, this important addition to the literature on adoption highlights a new dimension in social policy, welfare work and personal accounts in this field. The Dynamics of Adoption shows that fantasy and emotion are integral parts of the experience and affect the nature of thought itself. Applying this to the complexity of the adoption experience, it combines personal accounts with chapters by professionals. The personal accounts present detailed reflection on the feelings expressed, shedding new light on the problems of loss, feelings of abandonment and the dynamics of attachment. Using a more conceptual and clinical framework the viewpoints of the professionals are also used to explore the feelings and fantasies of the families involved producing new insight into the vexed dynamics involved in adoption. This book will enable practitioners, policy makers and families themselves to appreciate the many layers of the difficult process of adoption, and to apply this understanding creatively to their own decisions and experiences.

For several decades the issues of race, identity and child development have been of major concern to policy makers and practitioners in social services. This book is a major contribution to this literature, and offers a radically new way of looking at some of these issues. Based on intensive research on interracial families with young children, the book reviews the previous literature relating to racial identity development, especially relating to biracial children, and shows it to be based on flawed assumptions. Using intensive observations and in-depth interviews with parents of biracial children the author shows the many ways in which inter-racial families deal with issues of identity and difference. He concludes with a discussion of alternative conceptions of identity, race and development which will provide both practitioners and policy makers with new ways to think about these issues.