Appreciative inquiry for community engagement in Indonesia rural communities

This article highlights three main issues that challenge the ideal concept of engagement, which are the domination of instrumental perspectives; the lack of global inclusiveness due to ethnocentricity and western orientation of engagement studies; and the domination of post-positivistic paradigm and quantitative research approach. The development of micro-hydro power in Kulon Progo Regency, Indonesia, is chosen as the case study. This study applies an exploratory case study design, involving three hamlets with different level of micro-hydro power development. Through an analysis of the implementation of appreciative inquiry technique for community engagement, this article offers social constructionism and qualitative approach towards studies of engagement. This article also offers public-centric and non-western experiences as a response to the criticism towards organic-centric and western approach of engagement studies.     

An innovative medical and dental hygiene clinic for street youth: Results of a process evaluation

Canada has a noteworthy reputation for high quality health care. Nonetheless, street youth are one of our most vulnerable yet underserved populations. Consequently, a medical and dental clinic was created in downtown Ottawa, Ontario to respond to their needs. The purpose of this study is to describe a process evaluation of the clinic during its first year of operation with a focus on program fidelity, dose, reach, and satisfaction. A mixed methods approach was used involving interviews with providers, focus groups with street youth, analysis of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) data, and supplemental information such as document reviews. The evaluation identified areas that were working well along with challenges to program implementation. Areas of concerns and possible solutions were presented to the management team that then helped to plan and make improvements to the clinic. Our evaluation design and working relationship with clinic management promoted the integration of real-time evidence into program improvements.     

The Social shaping of the economy: An inquiry

This essay aims to discuss the notion of the ‘social shaping of the economy’. The interest for such a question stems from the growing attention this concept has received in the recent sociological literature. The principal concern has been to look at the foundations of this concept and to identify viable developments of the debate. By discussing the regulative properties of the market, the author calls attention upon four arguments in support of the concept of the social regulation of the economy. On this basis, recent contributions are reviewed in an attempt to grasp conceptual and terminological clearness.     

Results from a strategic planning process: Benefits for a nonprofit organization

A nonprofit professional organization in education undertook a strategic planning process to address challenges, refine its mission and principles statement, and obtain feedback from the members in order to better meet their needs and move the organization forward in a cohesive and purposeful manner. Three key planning tools were used to collect data informing development of the new strategic plan. This article describes the design and implementation of these tools and reports key findings for each. We explain how we used the findings to inform revision of the mission statement and development of the strategic plan and discuss benefits of the process and implications for the future.     

Making Room for Play: An innovative Intervention for Toddlers and Families Under Rocket Fire

Evidence from both clinical reports and empirical research suggests that symbolic play may help heal children’s traumas. Playfulness, an enduring individual characteristic, also contributes to resilience. However, trauma often sabotages children’s ability to engage in imaginary play and parents’ ability to be involved in playful interactions with their young children. This paper describes an innovative preventive group-intervention program by the name of NAMAL (Hebrew acronym for Let’s Make Room for Play), designed for mothers and their toddlers who live under the chronic stress of recurrent missile attacks in Israel. The major objective of the program is to bolster children’s resilience by enhancing their playful interactions with their mothers. The theme and activities of each session are organized around a saying with a relational or developmental message. Reports collected from 70 mothers after their participation in the program highlighted the success of the intervention and the changes in the children and parents, as well as in their interactions with each other. Follow-up interviews conducted a year after the intervention provided further information on the long-term positive effects of the program.     

The regionalization of intergovernmental organization networks: A non-linear process

We use a computationally intensive approach to explore how the world polity is becoming more fractured along regional lines. We discover that regionalization is a non-linear process and show that the world polity oscillates between fracturing and re-contracting. We do so by applying the technique of Hierarchical Link Clustering (HLC) to yearly intergovernmental organization (IGO) networks from 1971 to 2005. The mechanism for explaining this seemingly contradictory result lies in the behavior of IGOs, which depends largely on the organizations’ geographic focus: regionally focused IGOs create more communities, thereby fracturing the world polity, while globally focused IGOs create relationships across communities, thereby bringing communities together. Every year, different percentages of global and regional IGOs enter the network, thereby producing oscillations in the overall structure.     

An innovative child welfare pilot initiative: Results and outcomes

Successful family reunification is achieved only about 50% of the time when children are in foster care. Parents' ability to access and complete court ordered services are paramount in determining whether the family can achieve reunification. However, the research on how to best facilitate service access and utilization are sparse. A matched sample of 100 families with no prior child welfare involvement and at least one child in out of home care were selected from Department of Children and Family closed administrative case files. This study compared 48 families who received traditional child welfare services to 48 families who received a Family First model intervention (PFFP) from a large urban public child welfare agency. The independent variables were the elements that distinguished the Family First model from traditional child welfare services and included the number of caseworkers for the life of the case, caseload size, and service needs met through community partnerships. The dependent variables were the stability of the children's out of home placement, the time to reunification, the length of agency involvement, the stability of reunification at one year follow up, subsequent substantiated child maltreatment reports one year after the cases were closed, the distance a placement location was from the home of the family at intake, the match between identified needs and the timely access of services. Hierarchal regression and survival models were constructed to examine elements of the intervention for their impact on family outcomes. The results suggested that a community partnership model that incorporated family engagement, enhanced service provider accessibility, reduced caseloads, one caseworker for each family, are associated with successful reunification outcomes. Moreover, the intervention families were more likely to have their needs met with clinical or economic services, experienced fewer days in out-of-home placement, shorter involvement with the agency, reduced placement moves and were more likely to be reunified sooner compared to the group who received standard child welfare services. At one year follow up, the intervention families also had fewer substantiated child maltreatment reports and children were more likely to be living in the parental home. Implications for policy, research and practice are presented.     

An inquiry into fee setting and its determinants

The professional and psychosocial dynamics of fee setting are discussed from both rational and nonrational points of view. The author notes the current status of social work in relation to that of other health disciplines and comments upon the uncertainty generated by the assignment of a dollar value to an altruistic professional activity. The semantic and social meanings implicit in the fee-setting process are explored with particular reference to the personal and professional power of money within our culture. A three-step framework for the fee-setting process is offered. The author encourages a proactive approach to the currently somewhat passive process of assessing the monetary value of specific work in which the outcomes are themselves value judgements.     

An enquiry into the hermeneutic-dialectic method of inquiry

The Hermeneutic-Dialectic (HD) Method is analyzed in terms of such theory construction issues as theory vs. method, necessary evidence, and process vs. content. Traditional experimental procedure is also contrasted with what takes place in the HD method. It is held that problems with traditional research in psychology stem from theory and not method. Questions are raised concerning data interpretation in the present research, and how such findings are settled upon in the first place. The paper closes with a discussion of stereotypy as reflecting the natural propensity for human beings to reason predicationally. This discussion draws on the tenets of logical learning theory.     

Preparation for residential treatment: An anticipatory mourning process

This paper discusses the intense emotional bonding between parent and adolescent as it interferes with the adolescent and family's ability to tolerate the physical separation inherent in long-term residential treatment. It describes the mourning process through which both adolescent and parent experience and partially relinquish their attachment to one another in anticipation of the separation. The process is completed when both parent and child accept the need for placement and are ready to accept the possibility of new relationships in the residential treatment setting.     

Online organization–public relationships: An experience-centered approach

This paper advocates an experience-centered approach to public relations websites. A conceptual framework of the public relations website experience is proposed. The framework is grounded in communication and reader-response theory, and integrates organization–public relationship research as well as website usability findings. A new research protocol, website experience analysis, is derived from the conceptual framework. Applications of website experience analysis in public relations scholarship and practice are discussed.     

Women,reindeer herding and the Internet: an innovative process in northern Sweden

This research note deals with an innovation initiative involving women, reindeer herding and the Internet. It shows how women reindeer herders from a Swedish Sámi village were a driving force in the development of several innovative, EU-funded projects focusing on information and communications technology. The article shows how the innovation initiative involved a wide range of actors, ascribing stakeholders from civil society important roles besides the public and private sectors. The innovation initiative involved several different strategies. One of these strategies was internationalization – both at the European and worldwide levels. This strategy was employed to prevent rigid political hierarchies blocking the prospects of gaining support from local and regional authorities. Another strategy was the continuous exchange of knowledge between engineers and potential end users, adapting the initiative results to the needs of the local context. As a result, the innovation initiative has produced several kinds of outcomes. It has generated new technology as well as economic and social benefits.     

Eliciting reconceptualization innovative moments to foster change in Career Construction Counseling

This study tests an add-on procedure to foster change in Career Construction Counseling by eliciting reconceptualization innovative moments. After the career counseling intervention with 42 participants, 21 participants were allocated to the add-on procedure, consisting of two additional sessions focused on eliciting reconceptualization innovative moments In turn, participants in the comparison group attended two extra intervention sessions in which the lifetime task was used. Outcome measures assessing vocational behavior and psychological distress were applied at the onset, at the end of counseling and after the two additional sessions. The findings show that Career Construction Counseling was effective, allowing a significant increase in vocational certainty, vocational identity, career decision-making, and a decrease in psychological distress. After counseling, participants in the add-on intervention fostering reconceptualization innovative moments revealed greater gains in vocational identity and psychological distress than those in the comparison group. The practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Child abuse: An existential process

This paper discusses child abuse as an existential crisis. It describes exostential counseling as an approach to helping abusive parents to become more responsible and better able to cope with this particular crisis of their existence. Three types of crises are identified: developmental or maturational, acute, and chronic. each appears receptive to existential counseling within a framework of crisis intervention. Themes and the basic philosophy of existentialism are discussed. A case example provides an illustration of existential couseling in child abuse. Suffering is viewed as a dynamic concept within the framework of the existential psychotherapy of Victor Frankl, called Logotherapy, which is the primary one employed in this paper.