Mary Ann Jennings, MSSW, PhD, has extensive practice experience with children, adolescents and families and has taught both undergraduate and graduate students for over 10 years. Her research and professional service agendas have focused on children and families, particularly those receiving social and child welfare services. She was the principal investigator of a federal grant to train rural child welfare workers and is working with colleagues on an evaluation of a state's child welfare services.
2005 0-7734-6283-X In contrast to the traditional deficit perspective of working with children and adolescents, this book presents a strengths based family health perspective. The roles and functions of the family are being redefined in every domain of family life - physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, economic, cultural, and social. Embedded in each of these domains are the seeds of family life that can either be nurtured or left to wither and die. The profound challenge is how to identify the seeds to nurture and the seeds to leave uncultivated.