End Notes

Ready Resources

Mental Health Practices in Child Welfare was the topic of this year's Child Welfare journal special issue (Vol. 88, No 1.), and the guidelines published in that issue are examined in a new toolkit. Available at www.thereachinstitute.org/toolkit-mental-health-practices-cwg.html, the publication is designed to help administrators, supervisors, and caseworkers put the guidelines into action. The toolkit offers valuable tips and resources for mental health screening and assessment, psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, parent support, and youth empowerment. It is the product of a collaborative effort between Casey Family Programs, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the REACH Institute, which offers consultation in its use. Read the abstracts from the related Child Welfare journal at www.cwla.org/articles/cwjabstracts.htm#0901, or order the issue from the CWLA webstore at www.cwla.org/pubs/pubdetails.asp?pubid=j881.

The University at Buffalo School of Social Work, part of the State University of New York, offers the Living Proof podcast series to engage practitioners and researchers in lifelong learning, and to promote research to practice, practice to research. The series, with a new installment every two weeks, features conversations with social work professionals and interviews with researchers. Visit www.socialwork.buffalo. edu/podcast for more information or to subscribe.

The Municipal Action Guide on Supporting Foster Youth Transitions to Adulthood from the National League of Cities offers strategies and steps that city leaders can adopt to address the needs of transitioning foster youth and to improve communities. Recommendations include gathering statistics on transitioning youth, connecting these youth to existing services, and taking a cross-system approach to service delivery. The guide also includes examples of cities' strategies; Philadelphia's Achieving Independence Center is described as a way to provide multiple services for transitioning youth in one building. The action guide is available for download at www.NLC.Org/Assets/DDB15A11FA97450FA003DE64B5FA7A55/Mag_Supporting%20Foster%20Yo
uth%20Transitions_09.pdf.

Research Report

Identity Formation in Adoption is the focus of a new report from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, available at www.Adoptioninstitute.org/ Research/2009_11_Culture_Camp.php. The groundbreaking study provides information and insights that can be used to improve laws, policies, and practices--as well as public understanding--on a range of issues relating to adoption, particularly across racial lines. The resulting report, Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Positive Identity Formation in Adoption, is the broadest, most extensive examination of adult adoptive identity to date, based on input from adults who were adopted as children.

The National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) asked mothers' views on fathers and fatherhood, and the results are published in the recently released Mama Says: A National Survey of Moms' Attitudes on Fathering. The survey includes the opinions of 1,533 mothers on a range of topics--including work-family balance, obstacles to good fathering, and fatherhood in general--as measured by more than 80 questions. Fathers' views on fatherhood are catalogued in a companion study published by NFI in 2006. For more information, visit www.fatherhood.org/mamasays.

Anew report examines the experience of LGBT youth in the juvenile justice system. The Equity Project finds that in some jurisdictions, up to 13% of youth in detention centers identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), and they report facing bias, lack of understanding, lack of services, and denials of due process. Hidden Injustice: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth in Juvenile Courts, available at www.equityproject.org/pdfs/hidden_injustice.pdf, explores the emotional, physical, and sexual abuses LGBT youth face in some detention facilities, and also offers recommendations to improve the system for these youth.

Dispatch From Abroad

Adoptees are leading a movement for adoption reform in Korea, according to coverage in the Korean newspaper JoonAng Daily. After an initial appeal to the Anti-corruption and Civil Rights Commission was dismissed, six adoptees mobilized unwed mothers, community groups, lawyers, and lawmakers in an attempt to overhaul Korean adoption law. Proposed changes call for stronger government oversight of private adoption agencies, a 30-day waiting period before a mother must decide to relinquish her child, and improved access to records for adult adoptees. If successful, these efforts would be one of the first instances where adoptees returned to their country of birth and changed adoption practices through the government. Read the JoonAng Daily story at http://joongang daily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2912372.

South Korean adoptees are the largest percentage of international children and youth adopted into families in the United States. Because of this large contingent, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute's recent survey on identity in adoption focuses in part on adoptees from Korea. For more on the study, Beyond Culture Camp, see the item in "Research Report" on this page.

Gearing up for the World Cup that will be held there this year, FIFA recently opened its first Football for Hope Centre in South Africa. FIFA is the governing body for soccer--what most of the world knows as football--and is beginning a campaign called 20 Centres for 2010. The first center opened in early December in Khayelitsha, near Cape Town. Built in an area once known for its crime and violence, the center aims to breathe new life into the community, with rooms for public health services and informal education, office space, common space for community gatherings, as well as a turf field for games. "This center will use people's passion for football to transform communities and to provide hope and opportunities for young people," said FIFA president Joseph F. Blatter.

Each of the 20 centers will be run by an existing community organization. The Football for Hope Centre in Khayelitsha will be managed by Grassroot Soccer, a South African-based nonprofit that uses football to educate young people about HIV and AIDS and empower them with the knowledge to live HIV-free. The next five centers will be built by FIFA and its strategic ally streetfootballworld in disadvantaged communities in Kenya, Namibia, Mali, Rwanda, and Ghana and will address crucial issues like health, education, gender equality, peace-building and the environment--as well as HIV and AIDS, considered to be one of the greatest challenges faced by young people in Africa.

Work on the next center, in Baguineda, Mali, about 30 miles from the capital city of Bamoko, began in late September. The Mali center's programs will focus on gender equality.

Have an opinion on child welfare issues in the news, especially the comments above? Send a letter to the editor to voice@cwla.org.