The family at risk

The Family at Risk offers a comprehensive overview and assessment of the family preservation movement, a relatively new and highly controversial effort to deliver services to families at imminent risk of child removal. Mandated by federal law and hotly debated by politicians, practitioners, and citizens, family preservation programs offer intensive, home-based services that allow families to remain intact while addressing issues that threaten their safety and survival. Marianne Berry takes stock of the promise and challenges associated with these programs, used increasingly throughout the United States, and speculates on the future of this emotionally charged aspect of social work policy and practice. Rather than present a single model of intensive family preservation service, such as the widely publicized Homebuilders program, Berry compares several models currently in use and measures the effectiveness of individual models with various subpopulations of the child welfare system. In addition, she defines many commonly misused terms, including "imminent risk" and "reasonable efforts," and illustrates how principles of family preservation programs are often at odds with the aims and constraints of larger child welfare and protective service systems.