Child Welfare System

In this assignment, you will conduct a literature review in order to answer a single question on a topic of interest to you that is relevant to the sociological study of childhood. Appropriate questions may range from the broad to specific. Question is: How does California’s child welfare system work? You will answer your question by reviewing current scholarly, policy and (where applicable) current events literature on your topic and writing up a synthetic review of this material. Here the word “synthetic” means to bring things together, as in “synthesize”, so in addition to summarizing your sources, you will also evaluate them by identifying common themes and organizing how it makes sense to discuss the research, and suggest directions for future research.

You will be expected to incorporate material from at least 6 sources in your paper. You may use one reading from the class list if that is appropriate for your topic, but you are expected to do your own research for this paper. The majority of your sources should be scholarly books and articles; you may also use government and policy reports and news coverage if appropriate. The quality and relevance of your sources, along with the way you use them to answer your question will be an important part of your grade for this assignment. In general, the literature reviews you find in papers published in academic journals are examples of synthetic literature reviews. Looking over some of these will help you to organize and format your own paper.