Full Description
In Narrating Practice with Children and Adolescents, social workers, sociologists, researchers, and helping professionals share engaging and evocative stories of practice that aim to center the young client's story. Drawing on work with a variety of disadvantaged populations in New York City and around the world, they seek to raise awareness of the diversity of the individual experiences of youth. They make use of a variety of narrative approaches to offer new perspectives on a range of critical health care, mental health, and social issues that shape the lives of children and adolescents.
The book considers the narratives we tell about the lives and experiences of children and adolescents and proposes counternarratives that challenge dominant ideas about childhood. Contributors examine the environments and structures that shape the lives of children and youth from an ecological lens. From their stories emerge questions about how those working with young clients might respond to a changing landscape: How do we define and construct childhood? How do poverty and inequality impact children's health and welfare? How is childhood lived at the intersection of race, class, and gender? How can practitioners engage children and adolescents through culturally responsive and democratic processes? Offering new frameworks for reflecting on social work practice, the essays in Narrating Practice with Children and Adolescents also serve as a vehicle for exploration of children's agency and voice.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: On Narrating Practice with Children and Adolescents, by Mery F. Diaz and Benjamin Heim Shepard
Part I. Ethnographies, Narrative Inquiries, and Life Stories
1. From Disempowerment to Self-Belief: A Center of Hope for Vulnerable Youth in Cape Town, by Sharon Johnson
2. Aging Out and On My Own: Stories of Youth Transitions Out of Foster Care, by Sabrina Gonzalez
3. Dreaming Despite Status: Immigrant Youths in Contingent Migration Contexts, by Stephen Ruszczyk
4. "Hear Me": Collaborating with Youth to Address Sexual Exploitation, by Margot K. Jackson, Vera Caine, Janice Huber, and Muneerah Amin Vastani
5. In Between Worlds: Narrating Ecological Heritage Practices for Teenage Wellness, by Kristina Baines
6. Neighborhood Surveillance and the Prison Assembly Line, by Trevor B. Milton
7. Considering Inequalities: Experiences in Part-Time Youth Work Experiences, by Yasemin Besen-Cassino
Part II. Autoethnography and Storytelling
8. Finding Justice: Transforming Schools with the Children We Serve, by Mery F. Diaz
9. Fitting In, Letting Go, and Other Common Concerns for Children with Disabilities, by Sherri L. Rings
10. Between Life Stories and the Struggle for Homeless Youth, Benjamin Heim Shepard
11. Childhood and the Politics of Care, by Elizabeth Palley
12. Living on the Frontline: Reality-Based Drug Education in the Era of Black Lives Matter, by Jerry Otero
13. Poor Mothers, Poor Children: The Feminization of Poverty in Rural India, by Gretta M. Fernandes
Part III. Practice Reflections and Case Narratives
14. Understand the Brain, Understand Our Children, by Deborah Courtney
15. Beyond Deficits: Shifting Perspectives in Child and Youth Mental Health, by Margot K. Jackson
16. Shifting Identities, Shifting Meanings: Adolescent Siblings and Grief, by Erica Goldblatt Hyatt
17. Creating Spaces for Sam: A Story of Healing Trauma Through Narrative Means and Art Therapy, by Susan Macdonald and Stephanie Wise
18. Stories of Youth and Family Navigating a New Frontier of Social Media, by Rebecca G. Judd and Benjamin T. May
Contributors
Index
