cover image Turmoil to Turning Points: Building Hope for Children in Crisis Placements

Turmoil to Turning Points: Building Hope for Children in Crisis Placements

Richard Kagan. W. W. Norton & Company, $30 (270pp) ISBN 978-0-393-70218-7

Rebecca, nine years old, is terrified of being sent home from a state-run hospital to the father who has repeatedly abused her sexually. Three-year-old Robbie was placed in a foster home after being sexually mutilated and brutally beaten, perhaps by his mother or her boyfriend. Through heartrending case histories, Kagan, a psychologist who works with family service agencies in the Albany, N.Y., area, offers a compelling, close-up look at troubled children and adolescents in families seemingly locked in a cycle of traumas and crises, torn by alcoholism, physical and sexual abuse, drug addiction, severe neglect. Placements in residential treatment centers, foster homes or psychiatric hospitals, according to Kagan, can become turning points for positive change, if family members confront the psychodynamics, ""double bind"" messages and deep-seated wounds underlying a child's maladaptive behavior. His proposed reforms of the child welfare system center on a community-based approach that aims to provide continuity instead of moving the child from placement to placement. An eye-opening, hopeful report for social service practitioners and those who care about the crisis in child welfare. (July)