“Child Welfare: The Challenges of Collaboration is a powerful work, tying together nearly a decade of Tim Ross’s influential applied policy research. These studies emerge from the authentic complexity of real lives, where family crises rarely fit neatly into one bureaucratic category of human services or another. Ross explores the complications that arise when families and children involved with the child welfare system must also deal with the juvenile justice, mental health, education, corrections, and other systems, and illuminates valuable, creative, and realistic solutions. His work has helped institutionalize some of the most important reforms in child welfare policy and practice in New York City—and the lessons here ought to be taken to heart in cities across the United States.”
—Andrew White, Director, Center for New York City Affairs, The New School
“This brilliant research throws a spotlight on the young people who are the collateral damage of our social ills and the many difficulties that child and protective service agencies face in responding coherently to their needs. Child Welfare: The Challenges of Collaboration is full of sage advice for improving government services to children and families, advice we would do well to heed.”
—John Mollenkopf, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, and Director, Center for Urban Research, The Graduate Center, CUNY
“Readers of Timothy Ross’s book will appreciate its careful integration of research with examples from practice. Child Welfare: The Challenges of Collaboration is notable for its rigor as well as its sensitivity to the political and bureaucratic realities of service provision and integration. Anyone wanting to understand the complex challenges of integrating social services will find this book stimulating, substantively and methodologically.”
—Fred Wulczyn, Research Fellow Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of Chicago
“Child Welfare: The Challenges of Collaboration builds the case for a more comprehensive approach to address the needs of children in foster care. Because multiple systems touch the lives of every child and family in foster care, we must develop strong cross-system partnerships where we work singularly and collaboratively to maximize the return on investment of our collective resources. Collaboration has to become fundamental if we are to achieve and sustain better outcomes for children.”
—William C. Bell, President and CEO, Casey Family Programs
