Educating for Cultural Competence in the Generalist Curriculum

ABSTRACT

Generalist practitioners must be educationally prepared to effectively serve multicultural populations. Developing cultural competence is a dynamic process of growth through ongoing questioning, self-assessment, knowledge and skill-building, starting with the students' level of current competence and supporting enhancement of their abilities. This paper proposes a curriculum model for incorporation of knowledge and skill content for the development of culturally competent generalist practitioners.     

Protecting the Inclusion of Macro Content in Generalist Practice

Maintaining the integrity of macro focused curriculum content in a generalist academic program is a central issue in social work education. The authors describe forces affecting social work education that have resulted in an increased focus on micro level practice to the detriment of macro level practice. They present a generalist curriculum model for highlighting macro focused curriculum content. The model's components include: (1) curriculum goals; (2) curriculum themes; (3) liberal arts foundation; and (4) curriculum content and learning strategies. The authors highlight the model's advantages for creating a pro-activist educational atmosphere.     

A Design for Teaching Human Behavior in a Generalist Undergraduate Program

This paper presents a design for teaching human behavior to undergraduate social work students that is multidisciplinary in its knowledge base, employs a comparative and analytical approach to a variety of theoretical concepts, and is directly linked to the problem-solving competencies of practice. The design assumes that practitioner skills must rest on a broad base of behavioral knowledge that not only integrates large system, sociologically oriented theory with a range of smaller system social and psychological theories, but critically evaluates them in terms of their implications for human welfare and for their validity and utility in the assessment of client problems.     

An Involvement Continuum for Custom Software Development

Summary

In-house custom software development is an important opportunity for human service agencies. This paper presents a continuum of software development alternatives. Three discrete options, internal, external and collaborative, are described. Collaboration is illustrated in detail using the “CATS” example. While it is not a panacea, the benefits derived from collaboration are worthwhile.     

青年研究学科化的范式困境及其范式革命

青年研究的学科化,首要解决的硬核是研究范式的形成。作为一门综合学科,青年研究自身的特质问题给学科范式的形成造成了困难:1.多学科的理论分析尚未能形成论题共域;2.不同的方法论研究进路都未能提供学科说明的整体图景;3.学术共同体在青年研究的核心问题上未能达成共识。青年的生发机理是青年研究范式的轴心和根本,基于青年的生发机理,我们应沿着两条基本思路:一是青年是什么?,二是青年学是什么?,并通过增强学科意识,确立分支学科,重申历史意识,构建多元对话共域,注重经验研究向理论研究的提升,比较研究与强化原创性理论等路径进行青年研究的范式革命。     

On Pondering the Paradigm

It is possible to agree most heartily with Hamilton-Smith when he speaks of the semantic confusions of social work and of our consequent imprecision of thought. Unfortunately, confusion becomes worse confounded in his article A Paradigm for the Consideration of the Nature of Social Work Processes.¹ Precision of thought is aided by careful definition and Hamilton-Smith either neglects this task altogether or his definitions do not stand up to the most superficial examination.     

Vertical Axes on the Long-Term Care Continuum

Abstract

As the continuum of long-term care has expanded, public funding has not accompanied new care options. I detail access, provider profits and resources, and care quality in two types of residential care that fall in the center of the continuum, assisted living and board and care. These two options provide examples of how limited public funding leads to vertical axes, which represent access to services, the resources providers draw on to give care, and the quality of long-term care services, at each service point on the long-term care continuum.     

Beyond the Pale of Psychoanalysis: Relational Theory and Generalist Social Work Practice

Many have noted the consonance between contemporary relational theory and classic social work values and practice principles such as person in environment and starting where the client is. However, there have been few efforts to explore relational theory’s utility to the generalist social work framework. This paper takes the position that relational theory’s intersubjective stance lends new coherence to classic social work principles, and therefore elucidates the process aspects of evidence-based social work practice. In order to illustrate this point, the author applies relational theory to implementation issues around early childhood home visitation with Spanish-speaking immigrant clients—a social work service modality that, like so many others, does not fall into the category of individual psychotherapy in the context of private practice.     

中国租赁住房市场的政策范式

随着城镇化进程的加快,劳动力要素的流动性增加,加之流入城市的土地租金价格日益高企,租赁住房成为新市民、城镇中低收入人群的重要保障.在租购并举的发展期,政府通过直接参与,提供公共租赁住房"兜底",编制"安全网",为城镇中低收入人群和新市民提供政策性租赁住房.同时,综合运用土地、财税、金融等政策,积极探索多元主体参与租赁住房市场建设,不再使保障性租赁住房残余化,通过完善租客权益使租赁住房切实发展成为一种居住生活方式的选择.     

Continuum of Care Retirement Facilities

There is a shift away from interest in AAHA types A and B advance fee CCRC's in favor of more traditional fee-for-service approaches. Analysis of incentives to both providers and users provides insight into the causes of this shift. Providers wish to transfer the economic risk of care to users, and users increasingly perceive personal assumption of these risks as preferable to the risks borne through payment of advance fees. Key factors are experience with facility failure and the ability to recover assets, withdrawal from contracts, actuarial difficulties, new financial disclosure requirements, regulatory changes, the nebulous nature of contracts, estate considerations, tax implications, economic disincentive to provide care, improved access to long-term care insurance, the cost and lifestyle advantages of home care and congregate living alternatives, and preservation of life choices.     

The Continuum of Care System

Abstract

The Continuum of Care System is a Decision Support System designed to assist social workers responsible for identifying and selecting alternative living arrangements for children unable to remain in their own families. The Continuum of Care System consists of two software packages called MATCH and PROFILE. MATCH produces a rank-ordered list of prospective placement alternatives by statistically comparing an individual child to groups of children previously admitted into different residential facilities. PROFILE summarizes the characteristics and problems of children at each facility in the system.     

A Paradigm for Consideration of the Nature of Social Work Processes

Social work has traditionally been regarded as a series of methods, activities, processes and/or tasks which have been categorized under terms such as social casework, social groupwork, community organization, social administration and social action. However, these terms are a non-homogeneous series, and do not enhance clear thinking about the conceptual framework of social work practice.     

Gendered Elements of the Alternative Agriculture Paradigm

Abstract The alternative agriculture paradigm has been a useful device to both define and direct a social movement toward a more sustainable agriculture. But because that paradigm was defined by male movement leaders, it reflects their gendered perspective and may be lacking elements that make it more useful for both women and men. In-depth interviews of women involved in sustainable farming organizations and on family farms experimenting with new practices validated the elements of the Beus and Dunlap paradigm: independence, decentralization, community, harmony with nature, diversity, and restraint, but also suggested the addition of two other elements that the women identified as part of an alternative agriculture vision: quality family life and spirituality. The highly gendered nature of agriculture in the V.S. and Canada, where male identity is highly conflated with the role of farmer in the conventional paradigm, may make it more difficult for men who have just joined the' movement to articulate the aspects of quality family life and spirituality which the women saw as critical.     

Queer Intimacies: A New Paradigm for the Study of Relationship Diversity

Recognition of sexual and gender diversity in the 21st century challenges normative assumptions of intimacy that privilege heterosexual monogamy and the biological family unit, presume binary cisgender identities, essentialize binary sexual identities, and view sexual or romantic desire as necessary. We propose a queer paradigm to study relationship diversity grounded in seven axioms: intimacy may occur (1) within relationships featuring any combination of cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary identities; (2) with people of multiple gender identities across the life course; (3) in multiple relationships simultaneously with consent; (4) within relationships characterized by consensual asymmetry, power exchange, or role-play; (5) in the absence or limited experience of sexual or romantic desire; (6) in the context of a chosen rather than biological family; and (7) in other possible forms yet unknown. We review research on queer relational forms, including same-sex relationships; relationships in which one or more partners identify as transgender, gender nonbinary, bisexual, pansexual, sexually fluid, “mostly” straight, asexual, or aromantic; polyamory and other forms of consensual nonmonogamy; kink/fetish relationships; and chosen families. We argue that a queer paradigm shifts the dominant scientific conception of relationships away from the confines of normativity toward an embrace of diversity, fluidity, and possibility.     

Diversity in Diversity: Changing the Paradigm

SUMMARY

This essay discusses the growing complex diversity in client populations, emphasizes the need to support all legal statuses of clients, and advocates for a paradigm shift in culturally competent social work practice.     

Sociological Theory and the Relativistic Paradigm*

Sociological theory is compared to the relativist paradigm which is found in a variety of contemporary intellectual movements: microphysics, drama, theology, art, music and psychology. The principal elements in the relativist paradigm are: (1) complementarity; (2) indeterminacy: (3) relativity. In contrast to this thought pattern, the apparent pluralism represented in the strict, hermeneutical, and critical schools of sociological theory is shown to be questionable. Extant sociological theory is relatively unified at the epistemic level.