Citation

Weiss HB. Child. Youth Serv. Rev. 1990; 12(4): 269-284.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1990, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0190-7409(90)90003-G

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the last few years numerous reports from diverse and eminent commissions and study groups, as well as several powerful books, have been written with common aims to generate broad support and provide blueprints for major new policies and programs designed to help America's children through new efforts to strengthen their families. Whether driven by desperation at the plight of children due to the family's deterioration and the seeming inability of social service, health and educational institutions to do anything about it, or by optimism from the promising results of multiple, relatively small scale, family oriented interventions, these reports and books call for major changes in the ways institutions and services view and serve families and in the ways they work together to do so. They urge and spell out what a system of family oriented, as opposed to child or bureaucracy oriented, services would look like and, in so doing, they suggest far reaching changes that go beyond simply tinkering with the status quo. They each call for a broader public and institutional commitment to strengthening families so that families, in turn, can better fulfill their critical role in human development and community functioning.