Sense of School Membership and Associated Academic and Psychological Outcomes in Post-Institutionalized Adopted High School Students

Research highlights lasting cognitive and academic challenges in youth internationally adopted from institutional care. However, there is a lack of research examining internationally adopted students' sense of membership at school and associated academic and psychological outcomes. The current study measured sense of school membership and academic and psychological outcomes in post-institutionalized internationally adopted high school students (n = 29) compared to adolescents internationally adopted from foster care (n = 28) and non-adopted adolescents (n = 32). Post-institutionalized males had a lower sense of school membership than males adopted from foster care or non-adopted males. Group differences in school membership were mediated by academic achievement and psychological well-being.     

Danish and Norwegian hospital social workers’ cross-institutional work amidst inter-sectoral restructuring of health and social welfare

Starting in the 2000s, Denmark and Norway have undergone extensive restructuring of their health-related social benefit programmes, including how they are governed. Several reforms have sought to enhance inter-sectoral collaboration. Aiming at ensuring patients’ faster return to work, policy-makers have instituted economic incentives to both individuals and the health and welfare organisations who handle them. Through an institutional logics approach, this paper explores how hospital social workers in these countries are experiencing these changes. The ‘social’ part of post-treatment care and rehabilitation receives more attention in the Norwegian institutional set-up than in the Danish, and whilst challenges are experienced in both countries, in group interviews Danish social workers in particular express concerns about the implications of the accelerated return-to-work focus. In both countries, they report increasing difficulties in ‘making their way through’ the state-municipal bureaucracy. However, by drawing on the formal health knowledge derived from medical settings and the symbolic capital it bestows on them, they often manage to negotiate the work-and-welfare services, thereby transforming the social context for the patients.     

COMMENTARY (12 YEARS ON) ON ‘THE CONTRIBUTION OF OBSERVATION TRAINING TO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIAL WORK’ BY JUDITH TROWELL AND GILLIAN MILES

This article aims to stimulate discussion about relationships between the lives of professionals and of service users. The idea is that when parallels are explored and developed, power dynamics between professionals and social workers are reduced, the quality of interaction and work with service users can be improved, and professionals can also be helped in overcoming difficulties in their own lives. I start with an outline of my own personal background and highlight my development throughout, including my emerging identity as a Buddhist. I discuss a case study involving ‘Sally’ and her family and our work together while I was a social work assistant in a Children and Family's team. I try to show the interconnections between the different difficulties that we faced and how that informed my work. I look at some of the benefits, pitfalls and boundaries of working from the point of view that service user and professional are both working to overcome their problems. I also interweave interactions I had at the time with Carlos, a drug user friend in a crisis and the impact he had on me. Because I include my own situation I have called this article a ‘case experience’.

Throughout I refer to Buddhist and psychoanalytic thinking and particularly to agreement between the two around ideas that inner‐resistance is the main barrier to personal evolution. I argue that faith is the key to unlocking resistance, and that faith should be understood as the development of a belief within people that they are able to progress rather than be destroyed in the face of inevitable problems.     

Points System:An Universal Beneficial System with Multiple Objectives of Reform on Household Registration System

Reform of China's Household Registration system(HRS) has been entering a new stage and deserves us to research.The paper argues that reform of HRS should have multiple objectives.It examines various local efforts and practices of the reform and claims that the point system is one of the most feasible alternative systems for the HRS that can fit those multiple reform objectives.The system could also be treated as the new institutional basic for public welfare provision and rights allocation,and a new governance means for population issues as well in China's transitional period.     

Using institutional ethnography's ideological circle to portray how textually mediated disability discourse paralysed a Supreme Court of Canada ruling

Persons with disabilities created through texts as damaged goods are being ‘cured’ by workplace accommodation, a textually mediated work process. Prior to 1999, workplace accommodation in the Canadian federal public service signified the adjustments necessary to enable a disabled worker to fit into a workplace designed for able-bodied workers. In 1999, a Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) ruling known as Meiorin turned this accommodation provision on its head. Instead of being focused on individual-level fixes so that a disabled worker could be accommodated in an existing workplace, this legislation required employers to transform their workplaces so as to make them ready to receive as many different types of workers as reasonably possible from the outset. Using Dorothy E. Smith's institutional ethnography, I use my experiences as a disability rights activist employed in the Canadian federal public service to explicate how textually mediated disability discourse paralysed this groundbreaking SCC ruling.     

论我国当前加强和改善社会组织建设的关键环节

社会组织的发展及其功能的充分发挥对于我国社会主义和谐社会建设具有重要作用,应大力促进社会组织的发展。但我国社会组织发展还存在很多不足和问题,主要问题一方面是其内部资源能力不足,另一方面是其管理和监督机制不完善。为了促进社会组织的发展,应进一步厘清对社会组织的认识,转变对社会组织态度,并抓住重点大力推动社会组织的建设与发展。为此,从四个方面讨论了当前大力发展社会组织的意义,提出了应该从四个方面进一步转变对发展社会组织的态度和观念,在此基础上提出并论证了当前我国应如何在体制机制建设、能力建设和管理体系建设三个重要方面加强和改善社会组织建设。     

总结党的反腐经验、创新制度与机制建设

党从新民主主义革命到改革开放前开展的防止"糖衣炮弹"进攻的反腐败斗争,为改革开放后中国共产党反腐败制度建设奠定了基础。改革开放后,中国共产党面对"重磅炸弹"的腐败威胁,坚定走中国特色反腐倡廉道路,不断深化制度与机制改革,全面推进惩治和预防腐败体系建设。文章主要从党反腐败斗争的历史经验和视角出发,探索反腐的制度与机制建设。