Using the ‘risk factor paradigm’ in prevention: lessons from the evaluation of Communities that Care

This paper discusses results from an evaluation of the UK-based Communities that Care programme. This ‘risk and protective’ programme was set up in 1997 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation with a central aim of exploring if such an approach could be successful in the UK context. Communities that Care puts into operation the ‘risk factor paradigm’ by providing evidence of risk and protection for local communities that help them target resources for the reduction of future social problems. Results show that such a model looks ‘promising’ although though there are substantial implementation issues that need to be addressed if it is to be successful over a longer time frame.     

The Cartagena Protocol: Implications for Regional Trade and Technology Development in Africa

The majority of African countries have ratified or acceded to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, and many have received support through the Global Environment Facility and the UN Environment Programme for development of their National Biosafety Frameworks. This article examines the extent to which these frameworks are aligned with the goals of the Regional Economic and Regional Research Communities of which they are members. Many national approaches lack alignment with regional trade, economic, science and technology policies. The strict application of the precautionary principle and the imposition of costly administrative hurdles are likely to hinder intra‐regional trade and technology development.     

Evaluation of the impact of intervention programmes on education organisations: Application to a Quality Management System

This paper analyses the importance of evaluating the various components of the programmes or actions carried out by education organisations. It highlights the need to assess the impact of the intervention on the organisation and consider how changes are consolidated over time in interaction with the context. We propose an impact evaluation model and as an example have chosen the implementation of Quality Management Systems in schools. The paper analyses the results obtained in 40 schools in three regions (Spanish Autonomous Communities) with varying levels of implementation. The results show overall impact on these education centres as the teachers and management teams of the centres perceive it. This impact is more evident in some of the dimensions considered in the study than in others. The results also confirm the differences between regional contexts.     

Governance and evaluation: The case of EU regional policy horizontal priorities

This paper argues that the framing of many programme evaluations tends to eschew any rigorous exploration of the governance aspects of programme design and implementation. This is illustrated by an examination of the method-based approach endorsed by the European Commission for the evaluation of its regional policy programmes. In line with previous work, this found that such evaluations, particularly those using management-based approaches, underplay the role of social and political agency in programme framing and implementation, and therefore in explaining outcomes. Acknowledging such factors is especially important in evaluating cross-cutting themes such as equal opportunities, environmental sustainability and social inclusion. Known as horizontal priorities in European Union policies, such issues at their heart reflect unease with the traditional functional organisation of the modern state, which while providing organisational efficiency gains for planning, is not able to cater for complex and multiple social realities in a postmodern world. Using evidence from South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, and in particular the Mid Term Evaluation of the 2000–2006 European Union Structural Funds Programme, the paper argues that a robust evaluation of such horizontal priorities has to incorporate the full range of governance factors. This is because their framing, implementation and possible achievements are contingent on, and shaped by, the mobilisation of social and political actors.     

Services for the elderly in Europe: a cross-national survey

In 1989, a cross-national comparative survey on services for the elderly in Europe was initiated and funded by the Commission of the European Communities. It included the 12 countries of the current European Community (EC). Those services for the elderly studied were classified as temporary vs. permanent and conventional vs. innovative residential and community services. This article discusses developments within the EC relevant to public policymaking on aging and reports on the services for the elderly examined by the survey. It also delineates various new tasks for the EC to safeguard the appropriate use of services and thereby promote a dignified old age for all Europeans involved.     

Prework screen: Is it helpful in reducing injuries and costs?

A comparison was made between individuals employed as Nursing Assistants (NA) and Certified Evaluated Nursing Assistants (CENA) at Lakeland Regional Health System for one year prior to the implementation of a prework screen and for one year following the implementation of the prework screen. The goal was to determine the effectiveness of the prework screen on reducing injury rates and Workers' Compensation costs as well as the turnover rate for Nursing Assistants at Lakeland Regional Health System.     

From behind dikes and dunes: communities that care in the Netherlands

This paper will provide a general overview of the implementation of the Communities that Care (CtC) programme in the Netherlands. It outlines the socio-historical development of the initiative and considers the rationale and starting point for the Dutch experiment and the tools used in the process. Attention will also be paid to the implementation of CtC and some of the problems met in trying to introduce the CtC scheme. The final part of this paper will consider the main outcomes of the first (process) evaluation of the experiment.     

Program decisions : Evaluating a bird in the hand versus two in the bush

In new programs that have not reached full effectiveness, or in programs that are designed to produce future benefits (i.e., become “institutionalized”), evaluations that fail properly to assess future performance may bias decisions against the programs. For such programs, consideration of future benefits may significantly enhance the assessment of their cost-effectiveness. This paper describes an evaluation methodology based on decision theory that can take future benefits into account in evaluating a program. The methodology was applied to the Metropolitan Atlanta Crime Commission (MACC) Community Anti-Crime Project and indicated the potential for substantial future benefits subsequent to cessation of federal funding. The implications of use of this methodology and the MACC results for the overall Community Anti-Crime Program are also discussed.     

Targeted reintegration of expatriate brains into developing countries of origin: the EEC-IOM experience in Central America

"The present article...reviews the major findings of the end-evaluation of the EEC-IOM project in Central America, the Dominican Republic and Panama, a five-year scheme funded by the Commission of the European Communities (EEC) and implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to promote a selective and development-oriented return of Latin American professionals to Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.... The core objectives of this evaluation, undertaken in September-December 1989, were to assess the project's contribution to local socioeconomic, scientific and technological development through the selective supply of expatriate professionals to developing institutions operating in so-defined priority areas; to identify the returnees' personal reintegration patterns at the professional, socioeconomic and family-related levels; and to measure the project's cost effectiveness." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Improving comparability of international migration statistics: contributions by the Conference of European Statisticians from 1971 to date

This article summarizes the 3 main types of interrelated activities which the Conference of European Statisticians has worked on to improve the measurement and international comparability of international migration flows. The work has encompassed collaborating with the UN Statistical Commission on the preparation and implementation of the revised international recommendations on statistics of international migration, organizing a regular exchange of data on immigration and emigration flows among the UN Economic Commission for Europe countries and selected countries in other regions, and conducting bilateral studies on international migration within the framework of the Conference's program of work in this field of statistics. The bulk of the work which has been carried out to date by the conference has been conducted rather anonymously and even unobtrusively by the staff of national statistical offices in Economic Commission for Europe countries; they have achieved a modest but important amount of progress during the past 15 years. There is reason to expect that further progress will be made over the next decade, particularly if national statistical offices in the region continue to undertake bilateral studies and endeavor to improve their migration statistics. However, more substantial progress could be achieved if additional countries and organizations established projects aimed at achieving these ends (author's modified).     

An Educational Partnership: Preparing Social Workers for a Changing Society

The learning-service center approach appears to offer a new and efficient way of bringing university resources to bear upon the social needs of local communities while providing a reality-based education for students. This paper describes the efforts of two schools of social work, Atlanta University and the University of Georgia, to develop an educational partnership through the use of this approach. The authors describe the early stages in the work of operationalizing the learning-service center concept as a possible means of effectuating a viable partnership between the two schools and the community.     

Bridging Rhetoric and Practice: New Perspectives on Barriers to Gendered Change

ABSTRACT

This article presents a new methodology, Gender Knowledge Contestation Analysis, and uses it to examine the processes under way when transformative gender equality policies, such as gender mainstreaming are implemented. Drawing on data gathered in the European Commission, the findings show the processes linking high-level rhetorical policy statements, strategic policies, and daily working practices. This analysis enables exploration of the mechanisms through which indifference to and nonawareness of gendered policy problems are collectively constituted and methods through which they can be challenged. Findings thus deepen our understanding of barriers to the implementation of gender mainstreaming and the steps required for its effective implementation.     

Patterns In Discourse About Elderly People In New Zealand

As the number of senior citizens continues to rise, their public profile will grow and political discussion about their future will become increasingly prominent. The present research was designed to approach such debate by providing an assay of naturally occurring data drawn from the New Zealand Royal Commission on Social Policy (1986–1988). Public submissions to the Royal Commission on the specific subject of senior citizens were extracted and examined from a discourse analytic perspective. The results obtained by two independent analyses showed three patterns of discourse, namely, society's obligations to senior citizens, anti-ageism, and old age as a positive resource. This troika of discourse patterns constitute a collective voice through which senior citizens and their supporters defend and advocate the social position of senior citizens.     

East Asia Lifelong Learning Community 2020: Objective, Organization and Operation

Nowadays increasing emphasis has been placed on the positive role of human capital in promoting economic growth and social prosperity. While East Asia has firmly established and actively taken on its role in global development, a good implementation of lifelong learning to promote human capital and integrate educational resource on the whole regional level is crucial to its future. We explore the concept of life-long learning and point out the challenge to East Asia in building a regional lifelong learning system. To meet the challenge and realize the idea of lifelong learning, we design the framework of East Asia Lifelong Learning Community 2020 by presenting the objective, organization and operation for this regional cooperative system, in which universities and enterprises will be the main actors to make it work.     

UPSTREAM! Together evaluation results from community efforts to prevent mental,emotional, and behavioral health problems

Mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) health problems are prevalent globally. Despite effective programs that can prevent MEB problems and promote mental health, there has not been widespread adoption. UPSTREAM! Together was a planning project in three Colorado communities. Communities partnered with academic and policy entities to 1) translate evidence about MEB problem prevention into locally-relevant messages and materials and 2) develop long-term plans for broad implementation of interventions to prevent high-priority MEB problems. Community members recognized the need to talk about MEB problems to prevent them. The UPSTREAM! communities localized messages designed to start conversations and sustain attention on preventing MEB problems. The communities understood that prevention takes sustained community attention and advocacy, knowing that important outcomes may be years away. Long-term implementation plans aimed to strengthen families and enhance social connections among youth. Despite community readiness and capacity to implement evidence-based programs, there were few funding opportunities, delaying program implementation and revealing gaps between funding policies and community readiness. This community-engaged experience suggests an achievable approach, acceptable to communities, and worthy of further development and testing. Policies that cultivate and support local expertise may help to increase wider community adoption of evidence-based programs that promote mental health among youth.     

Willingness for mobility amongst European fishermen

The global trend of fisheries overexploitation and collapse has resulted in the need to reduce fishing effort, and providing alternative employment for fishermen is a frequently mentioned policy option in order to achieve this goal. Reducing fishing effort is central to the European Commission Common Fisheries Policy and over the years, the Commission has developed a number of socio-economic measures to encourage labour mobility among fishermen, and as such mitigate the impact caused by the structural adjustment. Considering this aim, this paper seeks to identify European fishermen's willingness for occupational and geographical mobility and the characteristics that influence this willingness. A survey was conducted with the participants in the inshore commercial fisheries of the Highlands of Scotland (UK), the Algarve (Portugal) and the South Evoikos Gulf (Greece), and logit models fitted to identify the characteristics that influence willingness for labour mobility. The paper argues that there are differences in attitudes towards labour mobility among fishermen from the different countries and that personal preferences, demographic characteristics, job-related and financial reasons influence the willingness for both occupational and geographical mobility. The paper concludes by pointing out the importance of taking local conditions and the heterogeneity that characterizes fishermen's behaviour into account, in order to achieve successful policy measures aimed at providing alternative occupations for fishermen.     

THE BEHAVIOR OF REGULATORY ACTIVITY OVER THE BUSINESS CYCLE: AN EMPIRICAL TEST

This paper tests a prediction of the interest-group theory of regulation which suggests that regulators generally will not force any one group to bear the full adjustment costs associated with variations in the business cycle. That is, the interest-group model predicts that regulatory agencies will redistribute cyclical gains and losses by supplying more "producer protection" regulation during contractions and more "consumer protection" regulation during expansions; i.e., regulatory activity which reduces consumer welfare will tend to be countercyclical, intensifying when aggregate demand falls and abating as demand increases.
The empirical results show a countercyclical and statistically significant ceteris paribus relationship between Federal Trade Commission enforcement efforts under the Robinson-Patman Act and several alternative measures of general business conditions. Since the Robinson-Patman Act is viewed widely as anti-consumer, the findings suggest that in cyclical downturns the Commission moves to protect producers against losses by bringing more cases which limit the tendency for prices to fall. This result may be rationalized under the view that during recessions, the Federal Trade Commission is in the business of transferring wealth from consumers either to protect small business or to bolster cartels. On the other hand, during business expansions the Commission reduces its Robinson-Patman case load, and such a change in enforcement may serve to mitigate producer gains, transferring wealth to consumers at the margin. In any case the paper offers empirical support for the interest-group model by providing evidence that the business cycle plays an important part in explaining the level and pattern of regulatory activity.     

WHY BLACK PEOPLE TEND TO SHOUT! AN EARNEST ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN THE SOCIOLOGICAL NEGATION OF THE ATLANTA SOCIOLOGICAL LABORATORY DESPITE ITS POSSIBLE UNPLEASANTNESS

The Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, 1895-1924, comprised the first American school of sociology (Wright 2002). Despite this fact, the sociological accomplishments of this group of scholars are relatively absent from the existing sociological literature. Data collected for this investigation indicate that the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory has been rendered sociologically invisible because of race prejudice, the perception that the school's findings were ungeneralizable, that their methods of research unsophisticated and of low quality, and that they omitted theory from their analyses. The findings of this investigation indicate that the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory utilized a sophisticated methodology to produce generalizable findings that included theory despite the race prejudice that existed during that period in American history.     

家庭教育需不需要法律来把关？

家长缺乏育儿经验，是否应该接受培训？家长教育手段出现偏差，谁来负责监督纠正？日前，全国妇联在近期举行的家庭教育立法课题研讨会上透露，相关家庭教育立法建议稿预计年内出台，并提交全国人大法制工作委员会和其他职能部门审议。针对立法能否有效纠正家庭教育出现的偏差，它是否在目前的社会环境下具有可行性等问题，社会各界人士展开了广泛讨论。     

Regulation and the management of risk in commercial gambling in Great Britain

The regulation of commercial gambling in Great Britain is the responsibility of the Gambling Commission, the regulatory agency created by the Gambling Act 2005. This article examines the risk model that it has developed in order to assess operator risks to the Act's licensing objectives. These are to prevent gambling from becoming a source of crime, to ensure that gambling is fair and open, and to protect children and other vulnerable people from being harmed or exploited by gambling. The article discusses four factors that affect the implementation of this model: operator compliance, the regulatory environment, the regulatory toolkit and the Commission's approach to its regulatory responsibilities. Its regulatory ideology sits squarely within the neo-liberal mode of regulation that has been pursued in Great Britain since the 1980s. By reference to political and public disquiet concerning gaming machines, the article analyses the tensions between the state, the regulator, the gambling industry and its consumers to which this mode of regulation gives rise. The article examines the challenges that the Commission faces in seeking to adopt a regulatory stance that is defensible both in terms of the protection of the public and the demands of a liberal market economy.