Broken Three Times is a narrative nonfiction book that chronicles one family's travails through the child welfare system. While this is the story of one family, it typifies countless others who get lost in the system. Each chapter of the family's story provides a launching point for discussing contemporary policy and practice, while it presents scientific updates relevant for understanding risk and promoting resilience in maltreated children, and improving the child welfare system. Emerging insights from genetics and neuroscience research are also reviewed. The book begins with snapshots from the mother's abusive childhood, which sets the stage for discussing trauma-informed systems of care initiatives. These programs include efforts to train professionals on the effects of trauma, implement universal screening of trauma experiences, and disseminate evidence-based treatments to address trauma-related psychiatric problems. The book then fast-forwards to the family's first involvement with Connecticut protective services when the children are eleven and ten. After a brief investigation, the family's case is closed, and despite their many needs, the family is not provided links to any ongoing supportive services. This chapter is then followed by a brief discussion of differential response programs. Like many unconfirmed cases, the family is re-referred to protective services within months of the initial case closing, and after a lengthy second investigation, the children are removed from their mother's care. Over the next five years we see the children pass through nearly twenty placements, while their mother continually relapses on crack and moves from one violent relationship to the next. The prevalence of substance abuse and domestic violence problems in families referred to protective services are also reviewed, together with a range of other issues relevant to improving the child welfare system and the outcomes of the children it serves. Over the course of the decade that is covered in the book's primary narrative, the child welfare system has started a process of significant reform. Trauma-informed systems of care, differential response teams, and strengthening of community-based mental health and addiction services are just a few trends that have begun to transform the system and improve the trajectory of children entering care in many jurisdictions. Judgment is still out on whether these changes will last and will prove effective, but stories like the one that forms the heart of Broken Three Times us of the complexity of the issues involved with child welfare. This book will hopefully provide readers with some ideas about concrete steps to take to improve practice, gaps in our knowledge, and a deepening appreciation of the value of incorporating broad perspectives into this work -- from neurobiology to social policy.

About the Author
Joan Kaufman, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine. She is also Director of the Child and Adolescent Research and Education (CARE) Program and Director of the Child Welfare Unit of the Zigler Center for Child Development and Social Policy.

Reviews
"While this book reads like fiction, the story is all too typical of the experience of families in the Nation's child welfare system. Summaries in each chapter on what we know, or don't know about ways to address the results of trauma are invaluable for anyone working in child welfare. This is essential reading for anyone engaged in child welfare advocacy, policy or systems reform." --Carole Shauffer, JD, MEd, Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives, Youth Law Center "Kaufman seamlessly links her authentic, compelling, and riveting case history of one family's journey through the US child welfare system to the underlying research in neuroscience, epidemiology, and evidence-based practice. I highly recommend this powerful clinical, scientific, and policy page-turner to all concerned with improving services for children and families who have experienced trauma." --John A. Fairbank, Ph.D., Co-Director, UCLA-Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress, Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University, Durham, NC USA "This is a remarkable story, told masterfully by one of the world's leading researchers on childhood trauma. Sadly, it is not remarkable because it is unusual, but because Kaufman so compellingly conveys the tragic consequences of addiction, and our ineffective efforts to protect maltreated children through a deeply moving portrait of intergenerational trauma. It is at once a compassionate but searing account of one family's pain, a guide to the scientific questions that emanate from maltreatment, and a consideration of some policies that might make a difference. I consider it nothing less than an urgent call for reform on a national scale." --Charles H. Zeanah, Mary Peters Sellars Polchow Chair in Psychiatry, Tulane University



Book Information
ISBN 9780199399154
Author Joan Kaufman
Format Hardback
Page Count 160
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 399g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 155mm * 20mm