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This book presents a comprehensive description of child, family, and community-level forces that modify the outcomes of youngsters experiencing conditions of poverty. Integrating a vast and complex array of research findings, the author elucidates salient underlying mechanisms via which poverty-related factors can affect poor children’s social and emotional development. In cohesive closing discussions, findings regarding major risk and protective forces are synthesized while delineating major directions for future work in research and theory development, teaching, and interventions and social policy. This timely and thorough volume is essential reading for students, researchers, and educators, as well as clinicians and policymakers concerned with understanding and promoting the positive development of children contending with family poverty.

Background Economic stability is a core social determinant of health and a necessary condition for maintaining food security, housing stability, and both physical and mental health. Using a qualitative approach, we identified barriers, facilitators, and participant perceptions about utilizing these relief measures. This study aimed to understand experiences with COVID-19 economic relief measures among low-wage worker households with children during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods The study conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews from low-wage workers in households with children in two U.S. cities in 2022 ( n  = 40). The sample was recruited from a larger study which included survey measures of demographics and receipt or utilization of a range of relief measures with both broad and narrow eligibility criteria (e.g., Economic Impact Payments, expanded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT), expanded Child Tax Credit, expanded unemployment insurance, and the eviction moratorium). A thematic analysis of 40 interviews was conducted using a constructivist approach to grounded theory, from which barriers, facilitators, and participant perceptions were identified. Results Interviews identified burdensome administrative processes, administrative errors, and a lack of information as barriers to access among those who were eligible; automatic processes for distributing benefits was identified as a facilitator. Participants expressed positive perceptions about benefits, mixed with some ambivalence about the need to receive them and concern over their discontinuation. Conclusions A segment of the population at risk of economic instability identified both barriers and facilitators to receiving an array of economic relief measures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that providing automatic processes for enrollment and reliable information streams for learning about benefits can bolster benefit receipt among those at risk of economic instability. These findings can contribute to the base of knowledge for policymakers involved in responding to the next public health emergency.

Teens in America's inner cities grow up and construct identities amidst a landscape of relationships and violence, support and discrimination, games and gangs. In such contexts, local environments such as after-school programs may help youth to mediate between social stereotypes and daily experience, or provide space for them to consider themselves as contributing members of a community. Based on four years of field work with both the adolescent members and staff of an inner-city youth organization in a large Midwestern city, Pride in the Projects examines the construction of identity as it occurs within this local context, emphasizing the relationships within which identities are formed. Drawing on research in psychology, sociology, education, and race and gender studies, the volume highlights the inadequacies in current identity development theories, expanding our understanding of the lives of urban teens and the ways in which interpersonal connections serve as powerful contexts for self-construction. The adolescents' stories illuminate how they find ways to discover who they are, and who they would like to be - in positive and healthy ways - in the face of very real obstacles. The book closes with implications for practice, alerting scholars, educators, practitioners, and concerned citizens of the positive developmental possibilities inherent in youth settings when we pay attention to the voices of youth.

This comprehensive text, written by experts in each topical area, provides research-based approaches designed for work with youth in the difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood. Developmental in its orientation, the text moves from population definition and identification, to causal factors and issues most often identified with placing youth at risk, to a prevention-intervention paradigm specifically created for teens. Illustrative case studies and enlightening sidebars enhance reader self-awareness, promote self-study and skill development, and aid in the comprehension of the concepts and applications of chapter material. Complimentary PowerPoint slides, test banks, and instructional activities are available for instructors' use by request to ACA. *Requests for digital versions from the ACA can be found on wiley.com. *To request print copies, please visit the ACA website here. *Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to permissions@counseling.org

Poor children experience greater psychological distress than do nonpoor children. However, evidence for the relationship between poverty and children's distress is limited by the use of measures of poverty at a single point in time, by a failure to examine race or ethnic differences, and by a lack of concern with explanations for poverty's effects. Using data from the 1986 Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data set, we explored the relationships among current poverty, length of time spent in poverty, maternal parenting behaviors, and children's mental health. Persistent poverty significantly predicts children's internalizing symptoms above and beyond the effect of current poverty, whereas only current poverty predicts externalizing symptoms. Mother's weak emotional responsiveness and frequent use of physical punishment explain the effect of current poverty on mental health, but not the effect of persistent poverty. The relationships among poverty, parenting behaviors, and children's mental health do not vary by race/ethnicity. These findings support theoretical developments calling for greater emphasis on family processes in studies of children's poverty. They also argue for greater attention to trajectories of socioeconomic status in analyses of the effects of status on mental health.

This book focuses on one of the key questions in education: What determines a student's success? Based on twenty years of work on student success, Ray Padilla here presents two related models he has developed that both provide a framework for understanding success and indicate how it can be enhanced and replicated. The research and theory that inform his models are covered in detail. He defines student success simply as progress through a program of study, such that the student and others expect him or her to complete it and be promoted to the next level or graduate. Rather than focusing on the reasons for failure or drop out, his approach focuses on understanding the factors that account for student success and that enable many students, some of them under the most challenging circumstances, to complete all program requirements and graduate. The models provide schools and colleges with an analytical tool to uncover the reasons for student success so that they can develop strategies and practices that will enable more students to emulate their successful peers. They address the characteristics of the students-such as motivation and engagement, the ability to surmount barriers, and persistence-and similarly surface the characteristics of teachers, the educational institution, its resources, and the contexts in which they interact. The process provides administrators with a clear and appropriate strategy for action at the level of each individual unit or subpopulation. Recognizing the need to develop general models of student success that also can be applied locally to specific situations and contexts, the book presents Padilla's Expertise Model of Student Success (EMSS) that can be applied to general populations, as well as the Local Student Success Model (LSSM) that can be used to drive local institutional strategies to improve student success. The book demonstrates how the models have been applied in settings as diverse as a minority high school, a community colleg

The idea that Britain, the US and other western societies are witnessing the rise of an underclass of people at the bottom of the social heap, structurally and culturally distinct from traditional patterns of `decent' working-class life, has become increasingly popular in the 1990s. Anti-work, anti-social, and welfare dependent cultures are said to typify this new `dangerous class' and `dangerous youth' are taken as the prime subjects of underclass theories. Debates about the family and single-parenthood, about crime and about unemployment and welfare reforms have all become embroiled in underclass theories which, whilst highly controversial, have had remarkable influence on the politics and policies of governments in Britain and the US. Youth, the 'Underclass' and Social Exclusion constitutes the first concerted attempt to grapple with the underclass idea in relation to contemporary youth. It focuses upon unemployment, training, the labour market, crime, homelessness, and parenting and will be essential reading for students of social policy, sociology and criminology. Robert MacDonald is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Teesside

In the latest edition of this best-selling text, David Capuzzi and Douglas Gross, along with 24 experts in the field provide a prevention-intervention paradigm to address contemporary issues facing today's youth. Written from a systemic perspective, this book offers guidance in helping teens who are struggling with the complex challenges that can be brought on by peers, family members, and difficult social environments. Part 1 presents information on at-risk population identification, causal factors of problematic behaviors, and promotion of resiliency in youth. Part 2 examines the development of at-risk behaviors relating to dysfunctional family dynamics, low self-esteem, depression, mood disorders, and stress and trauma. Part 3 explores the behaviors most often identified as placing youth at risk, such as eating disorders, suicidal preoccupation, teen sexuality, gang membership, school violence, substance abuse, homelessness, school dropout, and bullying, as well as the unique strengths of and stressors faced by multiracial and LGBTQ youth. Case studies illustrate prevention ef­forts from individual, family, school, and community perspectives, and text sidebars create greater reader self-awareness and en­hance the understanding of the concepts, skills, and applications of the chapter material. A complimentary test manual and PowerPoint slides for instructors' use are available by written request to ACA.

A child at loose ends needs help, and someone steps in--a Big Brother, a Big Sister, a mentor from the growing ranks of volunteers offering their time and guidance to more than two million American adolescents. Does it help? How effective are mentoring programs, and how do they work? Are there pitfalls, and if so, what are they? Such questions, ever more pressing as youth mentoring initiatives expand their reach at a breakneck pace, have occupied Jean Rhodes for more than a decade. In this provocative, thoroughly researched, and lucidly written book, Rhodes offers readers the benefit of the latest findings in this burgeoning field, including those from her own extensive, groundbreaking studies. Outlining a model of youth mentoring that will prove invaluable to the many administrators, caseworkers, volunteers, and researchers who seek reliable information and practical guidance,Stand by Me describes the extraordinary potential that exists in such relationships, and discloses the ways in which nonparent adults are uniquely positioned to encourage adolescent development. Yet the book also exposes a rarely acknowledged risk: unsuccessful mentoring relationships--always a danger when, in a rush to form matches, mentors are dispatched with more enthusiasm than understanding and preparation--can actually harm at-risk youth. Vulnerable children, Rhodes demonstrates, are better left alone than paired with mentors who cannot hold up their end of the relationships. Drawing on work in the fields of psychology and personal relations, Rhodes provides concrete suggestions for improving mentoring programs and creating effective, enduring mentoring relationships with youth.

Empowerment Starts Here covers an experimental approach to social change within urban communities by way of seven distinct principles for student empowerment. Turning classroom methods into a school model, Preparatory School for Global Leadership was the first to experience student empowerment at a school-wide level. This book provides insight on how educators can increase the efficacy and achievement of urban youth. Angela Dye shares instructional methodologies and stories to help the reader develop an intimate understanding of the empowerment principles in action. Through these principles and methods, individuals can increase their capacity to combat the psychological, social, and political challenges associated with student achievement and real school reform.