Book Review
Child Abuse and Culture: Working with Diverse Families
Lisa Aronson Fontes
ISBN: 978-1-593856-43-4; 2005; 239 pages; The Guilford Press, New York;
Robyn Nayda
Senior Lecturer and Child Protection Consultant, Division of Health Sciences, School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of South Australia, City East Campus, Adelaide SA
As the title suggests, this book aims to assist child welfare professionals and agencies to achieve highly effective outcomes in the context of child maltreatment and cultural differences. While many books are now available to assist health professionals to detect and manage suspected child abuse cases, these texts generally give little attention to the context of cultural diversity. This book is therefore very timely, as an increase in cultural differences because of migration is becoming the norm in many countries.
This book is useful for all levels of workers in child welfare, with the author linking philosophical and practical perspectives and using examples to demonstrate principles. Each chapter ends with concluding thoughts and questions to challenge the reader further. The link between chapter contents allows the reader to build an understanding of the concepts and practices in a logical manner.
Chapter 1 contains a discussion of multicultural orientation and child maltreatment work. It constructs the foundation of the book by discussing the central issues of professionalism, stereotyping, equity, poverty, and culture and child maltreatment. Chapter 2 addresses the specific issue of immigrant families and child maltreatment, their stressors, family life and methods of discipline.
Chapters 3 and 4 cover the assessment of diverse families, including topics such as the impact of culture on children's safety, and how to interview diverse children and their families. Chapters 5 and 6 address specific issues related to physical discipline and abuse such as possible feelings of shame for the individual and family. Chapter 7 educates the reader about working with interpreters, while the final two chapters deal respectively with the prevention of child maltreatment and parent education, and improving the cultural competence of the child protection agency.
I highly recommend this book to anyone working within the child protection and child welfare fields. It would also be of use to staff in other health and welfare contexts where interactions with culturally diverse clients take place.
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