Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform

Beyond Common Sense asserts that finding a place for well-being on the list of outcomes established to manage the child welfare system is not as easy as it first appears. The overall thrust of this argument is that policy should be evidence-based, and the available evidence is a primary focus of the book. Because policymakers have to make decisions that allocate resources, a basic understanding of incidence in the public health tradition is important, as is evidence that speaks to the question of what works clinically. The balance of the contributions in this book addresses the evidence.

John Landsverk is director of the NIMH-funded Child and Adolescent Services Research Center at Children's Hospital, San Diego. Brenda Jones Harden is associate professor at the Institute for Child Study at the University of Maryland. Ying-Ying T. Yuan is senior vice president at Walter R. McDonald & Associates, Inc. Richard P. Barth is the Frank A. Daniels Distinguished Professor, School of Social Work, University of North Carolina.