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Abstract
This introduction provides some insight into the issues related to parenting and an overview of the articles selected for this special issues journal presentation. Families come to the attention of the service delivery system through a variety of agencies and institutions—child serving agencies, mental health, hospitals, courts, and schools. Although many referrals are made specific to children, treatment interventions often include work with parents around parenting issues. The results of a survey of social work field instructors indicated the need and desire for additional training for MSW students and professional practitioners for work with parents and evaluation of program outcomes. The overview presents a unique variety of articles on various perspectives on parenting and the types of programs available to assist parents as well as the professional community.
Notes
This special issue would not be possible without the help of a number of individuals. The various articles included in this issue cover important content on parenting and offer insight into how a family may fare based upon empirical research and conceptualizations presented by these authors, a special acknowledgement goes to them for their academic and practice wisdom, and to our editor Dr. Marvin Feit who never doubted that this project could be done. A special thanks is given to the direct practice sequence at Howard University School of Social Work who agreed that we could and should take the issue of parenting as our focus in academic year 2011–2012. This project required the talents of us all and we the authors of this introduction highlight each other's contributions, Dr. Ruby Gourdine as guest editor, Dr. Annie Brown for having the insight to pursue the topic of parenting, Shayna Waites for her analysis and assistance in editing, and Allessia P. Owens for her research on parenting programs and drafting the survey. We acknowledge our colleague Dr. Soleman Abu- Bader for his consultation and support in this endeavor. Also, we thank our dean Dr. Cudore L. Snell and our social work colleagues for their interest and support in assuring that our efforts would be successful. This issue is dedicated to all of our mothers and fathers, blood relatives and fictive kin who sought to do the best job they could in rearing contributing members of society.