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Fostering faith in children is a shared privilege and responsibility of parents, godparents, and the church community. We promise our children at baptism that we will support them in their faith formation--in the formation of their relationship with God. We need to take this promise seriously. This book is intended to be an accessible and helpful resource for parents and other adults who seek to foster children's faith. This book succinctly explores many ways we can support children's faith formation, including our day-to-day interactions with children, the images of God we share with them, how we pray together, the rituals we create, service opportunities we provide, music we share together, the stories we tell and listen to, our celebration of the sacraments, and more. While this book has a distinctly Roman Catholic orientation, much of the content will be relevant for a wider Christian audience. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, this book is rooted in the conviction that the God we seek relationship with and that we hope to foster our children's relationship with is one who is infinitely loving, welcoming, and always yearning for deeper connection with us.
Faith to Foster is a candid look into the life of ordinary foster parents TJ and Jenn Menn. It is a journey chronicling their decision making process, how the children arrived, the birth parents struggle to rehabilitate, help from friends and family, emotional goodbyes, and how faith in Jesus empowered them through it all. This is a story they wished they’d read before starting their foster parenting adventure. TJ and Jenn share their experiences and feelings in a way that encourages any reader to serve their neighbors, not just foster parents. Faith to Foster reminds Christians how God can use them to make a difference in their community.
Filled with personal stories and Scripture, Faith & Foster Care shows how to practically and specifically live out your faith in foster care ministry. An encouraging resource for novice or experienced advocates and parents, specific issues addressed include advice on marriage and foster care, how to love the foster child and birth family, how to pray for your foster child and birth family, and how to let go when they leave. See how your actions have a far-reaching impact when you live out your faith.
Teachers have the responsibility of helping all of their students construct the disposition and knowledge needed to live successfully in a complex and rapidly changing world. To meet the challenges of the 21st century, students will especially need mathematical power: a positive disposition toward mathematics (curiosity and self confidence), facility with the processes of mathematical inquiry (problem solving, reasoning and communicating), and well connected mathematical knowledge (an understanding of mathematical concepts, procedures and formulas). This guide seeks to help teachers achieve the capability to foster children's mathematical power - the ability to excite them about mathematics, help them see that it makes sense, and enable them to harness its might for solving everyday and extraordinary problems. The investigative approach attempts to foster mathematical power by making mathematics instruction process-based, understandable or relevant to the everyday life of students. Past efforts to reform mathematics instruction have focused on only one or two of these aims, whereas the investigative approach accomplishes all three. By teaching content in a purposeful context, an inquiry-based fashion, and a meaningful manner, this approach promotes chilren's mathematical learning in an interesting, thought-provoking and comprehensible way. This teaching guide is designed to help teachers appreciate the need for the investigative approach and to provide practical advice on how to make this approach happen in the classroom. It not only dispenses information, but also serves as a catalyst for exploring, conjecturing about, discussing and contemplating the teaching and learning of mathematics.
Exploring and Engaging Spirituality for Today's Children: A Holistic Approach answers questions about the most effective ways to help children, pre-teens, and teens develop spiritually. This collection of research gleaned from presentations during the Fourth Triennial Children's Spirituality Conference at Concordia University in 2012 is divided into four major sections: (1) theological and historical foundations, (2) engaging parents and congregations, (3) engaging methodologies, and (4) exploring children at risk, child pornography, social justice, intercultural diversity, and abstinence education. Researchers acknowledge that the home is the foundation for Christian nurture. In Exploring and Engaging Spirituality for Today's Children, both scholars and ministry leaders come together with parents to promote a holistic environment where children are encouraged to love, respect, and obey God. From birth to high school, children's voices resonate throughout these studies as they are invited to share their reflections and experiences. Exploring and Engaging Spirituality for Today's Children is a lively, easy-to-read collection that reflects a broad range of faith traditions and is ideal for all those who are committed to the spiritual development of children.
This up-to-date and comprehensive resource by leaders in child welfare is the first book to reflect the impact of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997. The text serves as a single-source reference for a wide array of professionals who work in children, youth, and family services in the United States-policymakers, social workers, psychologists, educators, attorneys, guardians ad litem, and family court judges& mdash;and as a text for students of child welfare practice and policy. Features include: * Organized around ASFA's guiding principles of well-being, safety, and permanency * Focus on evidence-based "best practices" * Case examples integrated throughout * First book to include data from the first round of National Child and Family Service Reviews Topics discussed include the latest on prevention of child abuse and neglect and child protective services; risk and resilience in child development; engaging families; connecting families with public and community resources; health and mental health care needs of children and adolescents; domestic violence; substance abuse in the family; family preservation services; family support services and the integration of family-centered practices in child welfare; gay and lesbian adolescents and their families; children with disabilities; and runaway and homeless youth. The contributors also explore issues pertaining to foster care and adoption, including a focus on permanency planning for children and youth and the need to provide services that are individualized and culturally and spiritually responsive to clients. A review of salient systemic issues in the field of children, youth, and family services completes this collection.
Children live in a world of ever-increasing stress factors, including global terrorism, pervasive exposure to violence, increasing substance use, and economic and social instability. To help them maneuver successfully through such a challenging world to adulthood, community-based resilience interventions are becoming more important than ever. Currently, resilience-based interventions are expanding to examine not only the internal strengths children and adolescents bring to a variety of situations, but also to explore how to leverage community and family resources in the context of a culturally diverse world. Community Planning to Foster Resilience in Children reviews a variety of innovative approaches and actions that can be used at the community level to promote resilience in children and adolescents. Key themes throughout the book focus on how to: Shift the paradigm from illness to strengths and health. Assess and improve environments to minimize harmful influences and increase protection. Adapt to and build on strengths of cultural and linguistic variation in an increasingly diverse society. Move toward collaborative approaches that involve youth, families, schools, and community members who partner at all levels of program conception, implementation, evaluation, and improvement. For researchers, clinicians, and students, Community Planning to Foster Resilience in Children will be an essential tool in their efforts to promote the health and success of youth.
This open access book addresses, for the first time, Islamic social work as an emerging concept at the interface of Islamic thought and social sciences. Applying a multidisciplinary approach it explores, on the one hand, the discourse that provides religious legitimisation to social work activities and, on the other hand, case studies of practical fields of Islamic social work including educational programmes, family counselling, and resettlement of prisoners. Although in many cases, these activities are oriented towards Muslim clients, more often than not they go beyond the boundaries of Muslim communities to benefit society as a whole. Muslim actors are also starting to professionalise their services and to negotiate the ways in which they can become fully recognised service-providers within the welfare state. At a more general level, the volume also shows that in contrast to the widespread processes of secularisation of social work and its separation from religious communities, new types of activities are now emerging, which bring back to the public arena both an increased sensitivity to the religious identities of the beneficiaries and the religious motivations of the benefactors. The edited volume will be of interest to researchers in Islamic Studies, Social and Political Sciences, Social Work, and Religious Studies. This is an open access book.
This international volume provides a comprehensive account of contemporary research, new perspectives and cutting-edge issues surrounding religion and spirituality in social work. The introduction introduces key themes and conceptual issues such as understandings of religion and spirituality as well as definitions of social work, which can vary between countries. The main body of the book is divided up into sections on regional perspectives; religious and spiritual traditions; faith-based service provision; religion and spirituality across the lifespan; and social work practice. The final chapter identifies key challenges and opportunities for developing both social work scholarship and practice in this area. Including a wide range of international perspectives from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Malta, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and the USA, this Handbook succeeds in extending the dominant paradigms and comprises a mix of authors including major names, significant contributors and emerging scholars in the field, as well as leading contributors in other fields of social work who have an interest in religion and spirituality. The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Spirituality and Social Work is an authoritative and comprehensive reference for academics and researchers as well as for organisations and practitioners committed to exploring why, and how, religion and spirituality should be integral to social work practice.
This book develops a theology of childhood both from a theoretical basis in biblical theology (especially the gospel of Mark) and practical experience in children and youth ministry. Mercer builds on classical theologians such as Augustine, Calvin, Barth, and Rahner as well as modern feminist theologians such as Brock and Russell. She gains insights from pastoral theologians such as Capps and Couture and from contemporary cultural criticism. Mercer challenges approaches to educational and liturgical practices with children in congregations that segregate children from the rest of the church and its key practices of service, mission, worship, care, and learning. She reframes ministries with children as processes through which the church as a "community of practice" forms children into an alternative identity that resists surrounding consumerist culture and walks in the ways of Jesus. This book offers strategies for educational practices with children in congregations as it seeks to address the question, "What might educational practices that welcome children and contribute to their flourishing look like in the context of a faith community where children's learning happens in collaboration with experienced practitioners of faith?" Outlining a feminist practical theology of childhood, it explores five basic theological claims: (1) children as gifts and parenting as a religious practice of stewardship; (2) welcoming those who welcome and care for children; (3) children as already fully human; (4) children as part of the purposes of God; and (5) acknowledging and transforming the sufferings of children.