This book aims to provide the graduate-level or senior-level undergraduate student with the essential foundation of knowledge necessary for beginning social work with children and families. In the spirit of pragmatism, this textbook emphasizes practical knowledge that is relevant and useful to students, rather than abstract theories and ideas that are difficult to connect and translate to the real world of the social worker. This knowledge is practical in the pragmatic sense of synthesizing and integrating sometimes very divergent ideas and viewpoints. Through the pragmatic process of mediating divergent perspectives, social workers can learn to formulate purposeful actions that make a difference for clients