Impression management in the market for residential care for children and youth in Sweden

In what has become quite a turbulent quasi‐market for residential care for children and youth, providers now compete for public contracts. To create visibility and attract customers, many providers use marketing activities to project the desired impression of themselves to maintain or strengthen their market position. In this article, we analyse how companies that provide residential care for children manage the impressions they project on their websites and in advertisements. The results reveal that residential care providers use a range of impression management strategies to enhance their organizational image and to respond to potentially damaging or threatening images. The information providers choose to disclose leaves customers—in this case, the social workers responsible for choosing and purchasing care on behalf of clients—with rather limited opportunities to evaluate the quality of care. This is a significant problem considering other, more reliable, sources of information are difficult to access.     

Women with fear of childbirth might benefit from having a known midwife during labour

Aim

Having a known midwife at birth is valued by women across the world, however it is unusual for women with fear of childbirth to have access to this model of care. The aim of this study was to describe the prevalence and factors related to having access to a known midwife for women referred to counseling due to childbirth fear. We also wanted to explore if women’s levels of childbirth fear changed over time.

Connecting older grandmothers raising grandchildren with community resources improves family resiliency,social support,and caregiver self-efficacy

Custodial grandparenting can be especially challenging for older grandmothers facing age specific issues. Kinship navigator programs are social service delivery programs intended to inform grandparents and other relatives raising children about available resources and services, provide information specific to their individual needs, and help families navigate service systems. Our study utilizes self-report data from one kinship navigator federal demonstration project, which used a randomized control trial, to examine demographic characteristics for grandmothers under and over 55 years of age, whether grandmother caregivers (≥55 years) improve family resilience, social support, and caregiver self-efficacy, and which interventions improved outcomes for grandmothers (≥55 years). Each participant was randomly assigned to one of four groups: Usual Care (traditional child welfare services), Standard Care (family support and case management), Peer-to-Peer Care Only, and Full Kin Tech Care (peer navigators with computer access and interdisciplinary team). Thirty-nine percent of grandmothers (55-75 years) were mostly living in poverty, predominantly Caucasian, with 36% identifying as African American/Black, with at least one to two children at home. Repeated-measures ANOVAs for each subscale showed statistically significant within- and between-group differences for Family Functioning, Social Supports, Concrete Supports, Child Development, and Nurturing and Attachment, with the exception of Usual Care, which showed a decline in protective factors consistently across subscales. Future research with kinship families could qualitatively examine the experiences for older women in navigator programs and replication of kinship navigator programs could build capacity in data collection and maintenance systems to gain better perspective about how systems of care impact families.     

Global Convergence: Aging and Long-Term Care Policy Challenges in the Developing World

Aging around the world poses a global challenge in eldercare. This challenge is particularly felt in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where population aging outpaces the development of aged care policies and services. This Perspective highlights the phenomenon of global convergence in several unsettling trends and challenges shared across LMICs. These include the weakening of informal family care systems for the elderly, growing need for formal long-term care of the frail and disabled who can no longer be adequately supported by family members, and mounting pressures for policy responses to tackle these societal challenges. It is argued that policymakers should take a proactive stance. That is, when family care for the elderly falls short and family caregivers are increasingly under strain, the government should step in and step up support to fill in the gap by developing appropriate policies and a continuum of long-term care services that are accessible and affordable for the majority of older people in need. Three general principles are then suggested with regard to long-term care provision, financing, and quality assurance, which transcend national borders and can be used to guide long-term care policymaking across LMICs.     

公害犯罪之过失认定

近年来，我国各种领域的公害事件频发，严重危害了公众权益与社会秩序。这些公害事件多为过失引起的，传统过失理论的不足是导致公害犯罪打击不力的重要原因之一。公害犯罪在主观方面具有复杂性、模糊性和难以认知性等特征，在当今社会背景下新新过失理论相比于旧过失理论和新过失理论对于公害犯罪的打击更有针对性。此外，针对公害犯罪的独特性，还有必要在公害犯罪的过失认定中设定相对灵活、具体的注意义务与注意能力判断标准，以应对公害犯罪打防之需要。     

Youth in foster care: developmental assets and attitudes towards adoption and mentoring

The present study explores the relationship between the characteristics of youth in foster care and youth attitudes about mentoring and adoption. Using a positive youth development framework, the study examines the relationship between youth risk and resilience variables (youth risk scores, youth assets and youth perception of control) and youth attitudes about mentoring and adoption. Data were collected from 54 youth, ages 10 to 17 years, through intake interviews and surveys. Participants were 25 male and 29 female adolescents; 33 were Caucasian and 21 were African American. Overall, the youth had positive attitudes about both mentoring and adoption, with Caucasian youth having more positive attitudes than African American youth. A 2 × 2 (Gender × Race) analysis of variance revealed greater feelings of control for male and Caucasian youth. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the youths' perceptions of their strengths and assets were related to how positively they viewed mentoring and adoption.     

Client Experiences of Trauma-Informed Care in Social Service Agencies

This paper describes a qualitative study of individual client interviews (n?=?26) from four social service agencies to understand how clients experience trauma-informed care services and implementation challenges. We used the Fallot and Harris framework to explore client experiences of the five core concepts of trauma-informed care (safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, and empowerment) using semi-structured interview questions with each client. The four agencies consisted of: refugees (n?=?4), substance abuse (n?=?8), older adults (n?=?12), and maternal/child health (n?=?2), and the agencies varied in size, service goals, and clientele. The results of the study suggest that clients’ experience of these concepts was shaped by the actions of other clients, and these experiences were either mitigated or hindered by actions of the agency employees. Agency policies either supported or enhanced their experiences as well. The results also suggest that it was challenging for agencies to provide for all of the trauma-informed care (TIC) concepts at the same time. We discuss the implications of these findings for social service delivery in a range of agency types. Future research should examine the effects of trauma-informed policies on client experiences of each TIC domain.     

Women Caring for Our Aging in Place Seniors Will Lose Out because of U.S. Immigration Policies

Most older people experiencing chronic health problems, physical disabilities, and memory losses are still able to age in place in their own homes. However, they often need help from others to enjoy healthy, active, and independent lives. They turn mostly to family members, mainly women and usually their daughters, daughters-in-law or wives. But caring for frail elders has become more demanding and complex, and these family members often feel physically and emotionally overwhelmed and burnt out. They concede that they cannot do it alone. Others find it more difficult to hold full-or even part-time jobs. Hiring home (direct) care workers to assist their loved ones can be an effective solution to ease their caregiving responsibilities. However, these personal care aides, home health aides, and nursing assistants are already in short supply. Moreover, going forward the aging of the baby boomer population will result in an even greater demand for their services even as these jobs are often unattractive to American-born workers and turnover is high. This country’s immigration policies will make it even more difficult for women caring for older persons to hire these workers. Over 25 percent of home care workers are low-skilled immigrants or foreign-born. However, the Trump administration’s policies reduce the number of immigrants entering the U.S. and specifically choke off the various pathways that enable low-skilled persons to be hirable in the home care sector. Female caregivers seeking relief from their caregiving responsibilities will lose out unless we remove these immigration barriers.     

Challenging implicit bias: preparing students to practice with African American families

ABSTRACT

The disparity of African American families in the foster care system is a concern in the field of child welfare services and the social work profession. African American families experience unique challenges related to discriminatory practices and implicit biases in the child welfare system and by mandated reporters. To address these inequalities, state and local agencies have implemented prevention and intervention services to support minority families. Additionally, child welfare agencies have invested in professional development training for their workers to alleviate possible intolerant practices. This article describes implicit biases and considers how they could contribute to the disparity of African American families involved in the child welfare system. Furthermore, the article presents approaches to help social work students to identify and challenge their implicit biases to support culturally sensitive practices while working with African American families. It concludes with implications for social work education.