Turmoil to Turning Points: Building Hope for Children in Crisis Placements

This book represents Richard Kagan's effort to encapsulate into one book the vast world of child protective services and clinical work with families. In Turmoil to Turning Points: Building Hope for Children in Crisis Placements, Kagan, a psychologist with more than 20 years of experience in child and family services, explores the dark realities of child abuse by introducing composites of families from his work. Throughout the book he weaves tales of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest while also navigating the reader through the child welfare system intended to help traumatized children.

Kagan allows families to maintain their dignity as he carefully uncovers the reality of their troubled lives. He advocates a clinical approach that directly addresses the responsibility families have to their children and confronts the systems that work to protect children with the same even-handed technique. He reveals the weaknesses of government agencies and the courts while also showing that the needed results for children can be achieved. Kagan's world at times seems a little too perfect, but it is his goal to show that hope is possible for these children and families.

Turmoil to Turning Points offers recommendations for the distressed system as well as for those working with families. Like most commentators on child welfare, Kagan emphasizes the importance of an integrated system of care that includes a commitment to preventive services. He supports systems that work to build on the strengths of family members and promotes comprehensive, creative efforts to develop permanent living situations for children who cannot safely live with their biological parents. The book stresses how integral all the system players are in the lives of the children and families, including the professionals traditionally associated with the child welfare system, child care workers, and foster parents.

Kagan successfully relates his experience, values, and beliefs as a clinician and administrator in the child welfare system. However, the challenge to fully explore clinical issues in family treatment, system change, and prevention of child abuse in one work is daunting. Although not comprehensive in either the micro realm of child development and family therapy or the macro arena of child welfare, this thoughtful book presents ideas and concepts instrumental to the understanding of children, families, and the systems that serve them.

Mr. Mara is director of child and adolescent services for the central Massachusetts area of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health in Worcester.