Children's services and Title XX from a national perspective

The Social Security Act's Title XX, which became law in 1975, has brought many changes in social services. This article examines problems, confusions and opportunities that accompany the new regulations.     

Embeddedness and cohesion: regimes of urban public goods distribution

Theory and Society - Why do some urban governing regimes realize a more equal distribution of public goods than others? Local government interventions in São Paulo, Brazil, have produced...     

Disaster mental health services: a personal perspective

1. Services that may be provided by psychiatric-mental health nurses following a disaster include education, intervention, problem solving, advocacy, and referral. 2. Nurses providing disaster mental health services must be flexible and creative. Strong observational skills and teamwork are also essential characteristics in disaster settings. 3. Psychiatric-mental health nurses who wish to receive training for disaster mental health volunteer opportunities should contact their local chapter of the American Red Cross.     

Child care services and public policy: a new perspective

A new view of early experience is emerging in the literature. The implications of this new view on public policy for early childhood services and the possible consequence of misinterpreting this new view of early experience are discussed. The paper reviews the present justifications for providing early child care services to families, the origins of these justifications and the limits they impose for providing quality early child care. The author offers a proposal for more appropriate foundation to ensure the maintenance of quality early child care programs for families.     

Serving the urban poor: a study of child welfare preventive services.

This summary, for journal publication, of a study whose full details are being published in book form, brings the welfare field up-to-date on what began as a precedent-setting agency. The Lower East Side Family Union, in New York City, has provided many years of service, and has justifiably drawn national attention from its inception, when prevention was more talked about than funded. The lessons to be drawn from its work and the example it has set grow more timely every year.     

Students’ understanding of socio-economic phenomena: Conceptions about the free provision of goods and services

Research on conceptual change has paid relatively less attention to the social than to the physical science domain. In particular, research on conceptual change in economic understanding has been fairly sparse and loosely connected. Given the potential significance of citizen’s economic understanding in delimiting government responses to globalisation (Davies, 2006) this topic is worthy of further study. This study paper investigates conceptions about the provision of free goods and services, drawing on evidence from students in different age groups. In contrast to previous work we focus on the question ‘Should this product or service be made available for free?’ We compare the reasoning of students at different ages across a range of products and services and we explore the ways that they attempt to resolve conflicts within their reasoning.     

Forward Commitment Procurement: a practical methodology that helps to manage risk in procuring innovative goods and services

The Forward Commitment Procurement (FCP) is a Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI) methodology. It was specifically designed to both provide a practical methodology for procurers to follow and to manage the perceived risk of the customer and supplier in innovation investments. The paper describes FCP and its rationale and explores the actions undertaken in FCP projects and their impact on the barriers typically encountered in PPI projects. It draws on the practical experience on implementing and supporting PPI projects in the health care sector and uses three case examples to illustrate key points.     

Trafficking: a perspective from Asia

The main theme of this article is market development and trafficking as a business. It touches upon most of the aspects of the phenomenon, which have been encountered elsewhere, and translates them into the relatively unfamiliar context of many of the Asian and South-East Asian economies. Equally, the literature cited is also probably unfamiliar. Themes touched upon include democratization, inter-state relations, human rights, and scale and perspectives, together with the problems of definitions, theory, and the reliability of data. The directions and characteristics of trafficking flows together with routes and border control are also considered. Coordinated official responses to criminality and criminal organizations, as well as to trafficked individuals, are beginning to emerge. There is a note of caution sounded that contextual and cultural perspectives, particularly on sex workers, must be viewed somewhat differently to those in Western societies. The article concludes that as long as countries in Asia maintain their policies of restrictive immigration, trafficking can be expected to continue and almost certainly increase. This is because accelerating development creates demand for labour at various skill levels and because even in times of recession migrants and brokers will seek to side-step attempts to expel immigrants and restrict access to labour markets. The elimination of trafficking is unlikely to be realistically achieved through legislation and declarations of intent but by improvements in the socio-economic status of the population.     

Quality of goods and services as perceived by the elderly and the young/middle-adulthood consumers

To understand the consumption behavior of the elderly, an understanding of the elderly's perception of the quality of goods and services must be established. The general purpose of this study is to determine what elderly consumers perceive as quality in goods and services as well as their satisfaction with commodities in the marketplace, as compared with young/middle-adulthood consumers. Data from a nationwide sample collected by Research Forecasts, Inc. for the Whirlpool Corporation is used for analysis in this study. Results indicate that there are some differences between the elderly and young/middle-adulthood consumers in their perceptions of the most important indicators of quality of manufactured goods, their satisfaction with services, and most trustworthy sources of information. As the number of the elderly is steadily increasing in our society, greater attention should be paid by retailers to satisfy this segment.Regina M. Abernathy is Food and Nutrition Specialist Consumer Brands with the Curtis Packing Company, 2416 Randolph Ave., Greensboro, NC 27402. She received her M.S. degree from The University of Alabama in 1985.Mohamed Abdel-Ghany is Professor and Department Head of the Consumer Sciences Department at The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0158. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Missouri at Columbia. His current research interests include food demand analysis, quality of life measurements, time allocation, and labor force participation.     

A socio-ecological perspective of urban green networks: the Stockholm case

Landscape fragmentation threatens habitats, biodiversity and other ecosystem services. In tackling this threat, the dynamic processes of social-ecological systems should be recognised and understood. Although network analysis based on graph theory has been recognised as an efficient way of spatially understanding landscape or habitat connectivity, only few studies have offered specific approaches or suggestions for integrating detailed social-ecological values into geographical distributions. As a contribution to bridging this gap, this paper introduces a social-ecological network model for the issue of landscape or habitat fragmentation applied to the case of Stockholm, Sweden. Graph theory was used in combination with sociotope and biotope maps for simple visualisation of network situations in two-dimensional maps. The European crested tit (Lophophanes cristatus), European common toad (Bufo bufo) and human beings were selected as indicator species, based on a landscape ecology analysis in Stockholm Municipality in 2009. Slope, land use and human disturbance maps were assessed in order to decide cost values of travelling from node to node. Lease-cost-path accumulation was used to create ideal reference maps of green networks. Three separate maps were then developed for suggesting efficient routes for three indicators in city scale that mainly connect from the Royal National City Park to the other parts of the city. The model in Hjorthagen neighbourhood to highlight two practical paths that link this fragmented community to its neighbouring park areas. Findings make it possible to address two scales of network improvement strategies, namely first for the city-scale green network that connects geographical habitats (nodes) and the regional green wedges of the city, and the second that of neighbourhood links between habitats in detailed layers of green networks. Strategic improvement potentials are presented based on ideal reference maps of green networks correspondingly.     

Social assistance for poor children in urban China: A qualitative study from the recipients' perspective

In urban China, the recipients' experiences living with social assistance are neglected. This article examines social assistance for poor children in urban China, mainly by interviewing parents and children from urban Dibao households in Tianjin and Chengdu. It finds that the recipients' feelings included gratitude, helplessness, shame and exclusion which reflected limited policy effect on material support and social exclusion prevention. It argues that the recipients are under-served and current social assistance policy for poor children which only includes differentiated aid and education aid is inadequate and should be further improved.     

Value provided by interfamily economic exchange of goods and services in two cultures

The value of goods and services provided through interfamily economic exchange is examined from a household survey. The existence of an exchange system in society was documented. Over half of the respondents reported that economic transfers between families were important to the quality of their life. Estimated values varied with personal health conditions, importance attached to providing goods and services, years of residence in the community, primary recipient of services, ethnic culture, sex of respondent, and type of service provided. Estimated values can be used for calculating economic loss in community disruption and relocation, measuring family full income, and estimating the importance of nonmarket economic activity in society.The study contributes to interregional Agricultural Experiment Station Research Project NC-128 Quality of Life as Affected by Area of Residence. Cooperating States: Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, and Texas.Dr. Williams is an Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer Sciences and Retailing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907. Her Ph.D. was received from Purdue in Family Economics and Management. Current research areas are income adequacy, economic security, financial problems, and financial counseling.     

The evolution of the World Bank's urban lending in Latin America: from sites and services to municipal reform and beyond

This paper traces the evolution of urban policies promoted by the World Bank in Latin America over the past three decades. The retrospective starts with an overview of the changing perspectives on development during the 1950s and 1960s, which eventually led to the onset of urban lending programs in the 1970s. It then analyzes the policies toward the urban sector promoted by the World Bank during the 1980s and 1990s in the context of the overall development paradigm that prevailed in the institution at the time. It concludes by outlining the generation of urban policies that is currently emerging. The analysis indicates that the evolution of the World Bank's policies has not been the result of a carefully master-minded strategy but, instead, of a myriad of factors, including conceptual shifts in the prevailing economic models, learning by doing, the influence of individuals such as McNamara, and internal and external criticisms.     

Mainstreaming urban ecosystem services: A national survey of municipal foresters

Researchers and advocates are calling for ecosystem services management to advance from theory to implementation. To do so, they argue, requires two things: information on the science and practice ecosystem services management to be more widely developed and distributed, and support for ecosystem services management be incorporated into decision-making. These changes require adding to urban ecology an understanding of the political and information relationships supporting work in this field. To gain insight into these relationships I surveyed the national membership of the Society for Municipal Arborists about their efforts in managing municipal green space to produce ecosystem services. A significant percentage of respondents reported their organizations currently engaged in managing green space assets to produce ecosystem services and predicted such activities would increase over time. Foresters noted they relied on public and informal peer relationships as primary information sources in these efforts and reported little interface with private sector entities, viewing the latter, rather as most likely to constrain their efforts to enhance the production of ecosystem services. While foresters noted that they sought information from public and academic sources, the foresters themselves were less frequently sought out for their expertise. Respondents, however, foresaw becoming engaged in more reciprocal relationships around information exchange. The private sector’s absence in these relationships suggests insufficient legal and regulatory structures necessary to support private engagement in the growing demand for urban ecosystem services. The broad base of local grassroots and public support, however, suggest the emergence of constituencies that could lay the basis for new coalitions to advance green infrastructure and its related ecosystem services into the mainstream of municipal resource management.     

Gender and development from a Christian perspective: experience from World Vision

This article reports the effectiveness of incorporating religious faith in World Vision?s development work and organizational practice for gender issues related problems. World Vision, founded by Bob Pierce in 1950, is a Christian organization whose work includes transformational development, emergency relief, and promotion of justice, public awareness, and sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. As part of their mission, varied programs were developed in response to women's needs and issues. By 1989, the gender issues became the priority for World Vision's Council and International Board. This led to the organization of staff to manage programs to promote gender issues. The gender policy adheres to the norms of World Vision?s core values and mission statements, which uses biblical evidences to promote gender equality. The implementation process of the gender policy took a slow pace, which involves awareness building, attitudinal change, and resource allocation, to ensure that the barriers and prejudices that prevent women from full participation are dismantled. Being able to use Jesus' teachings and examples has given the management and the staff of World Vision the ability to promote gender issues with credibility and strength. World Vision will continue to implement good development practices and gender-sensitive programs.