This best-selling text offers a comprehensive look at child maltreatment and incorporates history, case vignettes, and the author's own experience as a child protection worker.

The author covers the history of child welfare, and neglect.  In addition, Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect explains case management procedures and focuses on how various professionals become involved in the child protection process and how treatment is undertaken.  The text concludes with an overview of functional and dysfunctional families, and contrasts healthy child development with development hampered by abuse sion of prevention and a consideration of the future.