School Social Work Information Systems (SSWIS): A Relational Database for School Social Workers

SUMMARY

After a review of their information management system, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School Social Work Office began a process to improve data collection and information management. The result was the creation of the School Social Work Information System, a relational database designed and developed by the school social workers themselves. This article reviews the process of evaluating existing systems, developing and implementing the new system, evaluation and continued development of the new system, and implications for further social work practice. This article is intended to provide the school social worker with the necessary information to develop similar systems.     

Fighting Violence in and Around Schools

Abstract

Violence in and around schools in America is a common occurrance. Cliques, bullies and gangs that taunt “straight children” are attracting millions of followers who feel caught in a maze with no escape route. This article presents a model that may assist administrators and social workers to deal with violence in America's schools.     

An Ecological Approach to Examining Cumulative Violence Exposure Among Urban,African American Adolescents

Using an ecological approach, this study examined experiences with community, family, and partner violence within a sample of 280 urban, African American high school students. The prevalence of each type of violence by gender, associations between severe violence exposure, and the rate of exposure to multiple types of violence were examined. Findings include high rates of exposure to each type of violence, with significant gender differences on several indicators of community violence and intimate partner violence victimization; among the female students, associations between each type of severe violence exposure; and a very high rate of exposure to two or more types of violence. Implications for social work practice are discussed.     

Intimate partner violence,trauma, and mental health need among female community college students

ABSTRACT

Objective: The impact of interpersonal violence on college students has received considerable attention, yet no studies have been conducted among community college students, who comprise 40% of all American college students, and have unique risk factors and needs. Community College students are more likely to be women, people of color, working, parenting, and first generation college students. Participants: Data were collected from a simple random sample from four community colleges (n=435). Methods: A cross-sectional quantitative survey was used to assess the extent of intimate partner violence, trauma exposure, sexual violence, and associated mental health consequences among female students. Results: Over 27% of participants reported IPV in the past year, while 25% reported sexual assault and 34% reported other uncomfortable sexual experiences in their lifetime. Nearly 20%of participants were currently reporting PTSD symptoms. Conclusions: Community Colleges should work with service providers to build their capacity to respond to students' needs.     

Date Rape After the Afterschool Special: Narrative Trends in the Televised Depiction of Social Problems

Social problems scholars have pointed to sensitive depictions of social problems like smoking, rape, and spousal abuse on television as evidence of the success of movements devoted to those causes. Media scholars have countered that the pressure on television producers to hew to formula inevitably leads to stereotypical depictions of social problems. We appraise these two perspectives by way of an analysis of the portrayal of date rape on teen television dramas over the course of 2 decades. We show that, for a period, advocates did secure portrayals of date rape that were in line with a feminist antirape agenda. However, that depiction yielded to one in which date rape figured as a narrative device, used to tell audiences something about the show's characters or their situation, not to tell them something about rape. Developments in teen serials' content and especially their form led eventually to antifeminist portrayals, in which rapes were portrayed as unjust but routine events. Behind these developments, however, were demands on television writers to produce not formula, but novelty. We conclude by theorizing more generally the effects of the demand for novelty on the depiction of social problems on television.     

Exposure to Community Violence,Suicidality, and Psychological Distress Among African American and Latino Youths: Findings From the CDC Youth Violence Survey

The present investigation explored risk and protective factors for suicidal ideation and behavior in a sub-sample of African American and Latino adolescents (n = 2,626) who participated in the 2004 Centers for Disease Control Youth Violence Survey. Structural equation modeling was used to explore exposure to violence at the community level as a contextual factor that could potentially influence depressive symptomatology, substance abuse, parental support, social support, and suicidality among study participants. Findings indicated that exposure to violence at the community level was not directly related to suicidality among this population of urban adolescents. However, it was directly related with several other variables under study in the model, which in turn were directly related with suicidality. Tests of invariance revealed several across-group differences, particularly by race and gender, in how the identified risk and protective factors in the model related to suicidality. Implications for research and practice with urban, ethnic minority, adolescent populations are discussed.     

Social Work Students' Changing Perceptions of Social Problems After a Year of Community Intervention

This paper aims to throw light on the emotional and cognitive processes of students within social change-oriented field work as they develop over a year, as described through a projective and phenomenological art medium drawn and discussed at the beginning and at the end of the year. The literature on social work points to a discrepancy between the cognitive structural explanations of social problems that are taught to social work students, and their tendency to prefer focusing on individual rather than on societal levels of intervention. The aim of this examination of the students' processes over the year is to increase our understanding of the students' experience and understanding of their social change mission, so as to better prepare them for the challenges it entails, and to see where they get ‘lost’. Findings from this paper point to the gradual internalization of social change as a complex process, combined with the reframing of this complexity into tangible results.     

Research on Social Movements and Political Violence

Attention to extreme forms of political violence in the social sciences has been episodic, and studies of different forms of political violence have followed different approaches, with “breakdown” theories mostly used for the analysis of right-wing radicalism, social movement theories sometimes adapted to research on left-wing radical groups, and area study specialists focusing on ethnic and religious forms. Some of the studies on extreme forms of political violence that have emerged within the social movement tradition have nevertheless been able to trace processes of conflict escalation through the detailed examination of historical cases. This article assesses some of the knowledge acquired in previous research approaching issues of political violence from the social movement perspective, as well as the challenges coming from new waves of debate on terrorist and counterterrorist action and discourses. In doing this, the article reviews contributions coming from research looking at violence as escalation of action repertoires within protest cycles; political opportunity and the state in escalation processes; resource mobilization and violent organizations; narratives of violence; and militant constructions of external reality.

Social Work,Economic Conversion,and Community Practice:

With the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a new administration in Washington, hope is renewed for a peace economy. This hope is evidenced in the growth of new economic conversion projects ranging from legislative initiatives to new grassroots organizations. This exploratory survey of 15 directors of conversion projects sought to discover the kinds of strategies used and the degree of social work participation. Although results indicate that only one-third of the organizations involved social workers, there is much common ground between conversion strategies, community practice, and social work.     

Strategies for Preventing Neighborhood Violence: Toward Bringing Collective Efficacy into Social Work Practice

Neighborhood violence has profound effects on issues associated with social work practice, such as health, safety, and the positive development of children, youth, and families. This article brings together the literatures in criminology and public health that examine violence and social work's history in community practice to develop violence prevention strategies. One important concept from the criminology and public health literatures is collective efficacy, defined as neighbors having shared values, trust, and a willingness to intervene in neighborhood problems. By building on the community practice literature and studies from peacemaking criminology, the article provides examples of ways that collective efficacy can be built and implemented in low income neighborhoods. Strategies include awareness of collective efficacy, relationship building, bystander education, and restorative justice.     

A Case for Improving Social and Supportive Service Delivery for Ex-Offenders with Community Information Systems (CINS)

Research has shown that information technology, such as reentry mapping, community information systems (CINS) and other geographic information system (GIS)–related applications have improved criminal justice and social welfare outcomes. These Web-based applications are essential in that they serve as portals for extensive data allocation, collection, storage, and information sharing. One such Web-based application, reentryBase, is a planned CINS, designed to respond to the growing need for improved delivery of social and supportive services to those returning from prison and jail. Its specific aim is to build capacity for both outreach to ex-offenders and networking among and between reentry stakeholders.     

Offspring of Parents with Gambling Problems: Adjustment Problems and Explanatory Mechanisms

We compared offspring of problem gamblers (n = 42) to offspring of parents without gambling problems (n = 100) to see (1) whether the two groups differed with respect to depressive feelings and conduct/antisociality problems and (2) whether ineffective parenting or the offspring’s own gambling problems played a mediating role in this context. Participants were drawn from a relatively large community-based study (N = 1,872). Parents rated their own gambling and other mental health problems when their children were in mid-adolescence. The children’s self-reports on depressive feelings and conduct/antisociality problems were assessed at two points in time: by mid-adolescence and again by early adulthood. Results showed that children of parents with gambling problems reported more depressive feelings and more conduct problems by mid-adolescence than children of parents without gambling problems. Children of problem gamblers also experienced an increase in their depressive symptoms from mid-adolescence to early adulthood. Importantly, ineffective parenting, but not children’s gambling problems, mediated almost all the links between parental problem gambling and children’s adjustment problems. These results add to a very small data base showing that children of problem gamblers are at risk for a variety of adjustment problems.

The Deployment of Information Technology in an International Rural Health Care Project

SUMMARY

This paper presents a case study of the utilization of Information Technology (IT) in a cataract surgery eye camp held outside a remote village in India. Detailed here are the organizational and technological context of the project, the steps taken in the development and deployment of a patient medical database, the data collection procedures employed during the eye camp, and the resultant information products of these endeavors. Discussed are the implications for the application of IT in the documentation and evaluation of time-limited health and social service delivery projects.     

Violence Against the Young: The New Urban Challenges

This article examines the recent deaths of Chicago Public School students. It focuses on the school year between September 2006 and June 2007. At least 30 individuals were killed during that interval. In this school year, the homicides continue at about the same pace. Although violence within the schools had declined and violence (including homicides) was at a lower rate for the city of Chicago, some communities remained vulnerable to this threat. Neighborhood characteristics seem to be contributing factors, but family dynamics and an individual's life style comes into play. The person in the environment that we draw upon in social work has limitations, given new urban problems.     

Analogical Problems with Digital Data

Current initiatives of digitally archiving ethnographic and linguistic data promise considerable advantages with regard to longevity and accessibility. This article discusses these ‘digital promises’ in the context of projects funded by recent research programs on endangered languages and cultures. It is argued that far from being merely a new technological tool for preserving data, digital archiving has considerable impact on the ways in which knowledge and research is organised and on the relationship between the participants in the research process. The new technological means change the structure of ethnographic data collections while highlighting a number of questions of data access and property rights that are analogous to earlier, and largely still unresolved, debates about the ethics of research and about data access and ownership.     

Isolation as a Form of Marital Violence: The South Asian Immigrant Experience1

Isolation is an important factor in marital abuse among South Asian immigrant families. It lends itself to the invisibility immigrant women experience based on their ethno-gender status in the United States. Drawnfrom unstructured interviews with abused South Asian immigrant women, three different levels of isolation are explained. The first level involves the quality of a woman’s relationship with her spouse; the second is related to thefrequency and quality of social interaction with friends, relatives, and coworkers; and the third is explained in terms of the level of access to and participation in the ethnic community and other formal institutions.     

Balancing fidelity,contextualisation, and innovation: learning from an adaption of SASA! to prevent violence against women in the Dadaab refugee camp

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on SASA!, a community mobilisation approach that was developed in Uganda by Raising Voices, with the aim of preventing violence against women. SASA! proved effective in reducing intimate partner violence against women, and has since been used in over 25 countries worldwide. In this article, we draw on recent research into the International Refugee Committee’s implementation of SASA! in Dadaab, Kenya. In particular, we focus on how the refugee camp setting shapes the adaptation and delivery of the SASA! programme and explore the balance to be struck between fidelity to the SASA! methodology, and adaptations to make it suitable for use in this specific humanitarian context.     

Finding Our Way

Abstract

In the fall of 1992, a community needs assessment on the problem of family violence was completed in the Aboriginal community of Conne River, Newfoundland, Canada. This article reports both the process and findings of the study which was guided by two important principles. First, community participation was a critical component of all aspects of the assessment and, second, the assessment was based on multiple sources of data.

The data were collected from face-to-face interviews with key informants (community experts) and consumers/potential consumers of services, focus groups with youth and women, and informal contact and discussion with interested members of the community, some of them professionals.

The findings indicate that the people of Conne River are knowledgeable about the types of family violence that occur in the community and the various sources of support and help. There was also a high level of interest in the topic and a genuine concern that some positive action would result from this assessment.

The assessment identified the need for more supports for women with families in crisis, not just crisis intervention during incidents of violence but a more holistic network of supports. These supports need to be community-based, operating within existing agencies. The study identified the need for a community-based committee to undertake the planning of emergency services for women and families in crisis and long-term planning for a support network and/or community centre for women.     

Social Justice Approach to Community Development

This article presents a case study examining nonprofit board and director roles in the first 5 years of an organization’s life, using 3 organizational change approaches: contingency, life-cycle, and cognitive-interpretive. Data include monthly board meeting minutes and director’s reports for the first 5 years of a nonprofit human service agency’s existence. The article concludes that although all 3 theoretical approaches are productive explanatory frameworks for organizational change, each one, on its own, is incomplete. The findings point to the need for further theoretical synthesis and paradigm elaboration to inform our understanding of nonprofit director and board relationships.     

The Social Work Outreach Service Within a School of Social Work

ABSTRACT

This article describes a unique community outreach service that is designed specifically to meet the needs of the local community, provide training ground for social work students, and experiment with the development of new practice models. Located within a school of social work, the service was born in an atmosphere in which both the university and the school were being called upon to play a greater part in the community. Since its inception in 1992, it has successfully served the local community through direct service, community organization activities, and consultation. Despite these successes in outreach to the community, internal challenges continue to exist.