Learning Life Skills Through Challenging and Negative Experiences

Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal - Youth who are socially vulnerable are disproportionately confronted with culminating risk factors that impact their everyday lives. Within positive youth...     

Leader-member exchange and organizational citizenship behaviors: Contextual effects of leader power distance and group task interdependence

In this paper we explore the context of the relationship between leader-member exchange and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB). We maintain that workgroup leader's power distance and the extent of task interdependence in the group exert cross-level effects on the LMX-OCB relationship. We assert that leader power distance attenuates the relationship between LMX and OCB, and this effect is stronger in workgroups with high degree of task interdependence. Results of hierarchical linear modeling analysis of data gathered from 245 employees nested in 54 workgroups supported our hypotheses. LMX-OCB relationship was weaker in workgroups led by high power distance leaders. Further, the three-way cross-level interaction between LMX, leader power distance and group task interdependence demonstrated that the tendency for LMX to have a stronger positive effect on OCB when leader power distance was low rather than high was more pronounced in high task interdependence teams.     

Troubling Discourses of Poverty in Early Childhood in the UK

Poverty in early childhood is pervasive, affecting every aspect of children’s lives. Under current government policies child poverty in the UK is predicted to rise to 40 per cent by 2022. Dominant discourses of poverty have historically focussed on an over‐arching discourse of moral responsibility, essentially relating to notions of deserving and underserving poor. This paper examines how government policy continues to significantly impact on young children and families on low incomes in early childhood and how stigmatised discourses about welfare, work are pervasive. It is argued that discourses of redistribution and children’s rights deserve greater recognition if poverty is to be addressed.     

Ageing Population: Identifying the Determinants of Ageing in the Least Developed Countries

Population Research and Policy Review - The issue of population ageing is no longer exclusively centred on developed countries. Empirical studies have proven that the rise in the proportion of the...     

Professional discretion and length of work experience: what findings from focus groups with care managers in elder care suggest

ABSTRACT

Research has explored how care managers in elder care – who often function as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ – regard professional discretion. The way in which length of work experience affects care managers’ use of professional discretion remains, however, unexplored. This article present findings from 12 focus groups with 60 care managers. By bringing attention to how care managers experience the needs assessment process, this article sheds light on how these ‘street-level bureaucrats’ struggle when they try to balance their clients’ needs against institutional frameworks and local guidelines. Length of work experience seems to play a role in how care managers claim to use professional discretion. Experienced care managers describe how they deviate from the guidelines at times in order to create an increased scope of action in their decision-making process. Those with less time in the profession describe greater difficulties in this respect. Findings suggest that research should explore if length of work experience plays a role in the actual way in which care managers assess needs and make decisions. As such, they contribute to our understanding of how needs assessment processes are navigated by professionals while also pointing towards the nature of professional discretion in gerontological social work.     

Childhood innocence and experience: Memory,discourse and practice

This article examines how childhood innocence is taken up in (92) memories of undergraduate students across four sites in the US and Canada. Drawing from Foucault's theory of discourse, we examine how three themes—innocence as not knowing, innocence as being provided for, and loss of innocence as exposure to adversity—construct childhood as the absence of conflict, which perpetuates the myth of an innocence/experience binary and encourages a deficit perspective of childhood. These findings contribute to teacher education and childhood studies by highlighting the importance of interrogating adult memories in order to disrupt normative assumptions about children.     

Multidimensional Resilience: Predictive and Construct Validity of the Individual,Family, and Community Resilience Profile

Few measures parallel the robust depth offered in the existing multidimensional and ecologically informed theories of resilience. This study sought to evaluate the test–retest reliability, construct, and predictive validity of the individual, family, and community resilience resource profile (IFCR-R). The IFCR-R measures a family’s access to resilience resources and protective factors across multiple ecological levels. Confirmatory factor analysis was used with a sample of n?=?810 low-income families. And 159 families completed multiple time point measures for test–retest reliability and predictive validity evaluation. Results of this study support the proposed multidimensional ecological structure of the IFCR-R and found that the IFCR-R offers an acceptable test–retest reliability and predictive validity for outcomes of mental and physical health.     

Comparative Perspectives on Social Indicators

Social Indicators Research -