Occupational therapy students' contribution towards enabling potential in a semi-rural community

Occupational therapy students at the University of Pretoria engage in a 7-week service learning fieldwork in their fourth year. This fieldwork takes place in a semi-rural community. The article reports on a successful project where the students enabled adult learners with disabilities to improve their engagement in meaningful activities and trained the learners in selected prevocational skills. The students included a teacher from the center and she was given the opportunity to expand her skills in teaching as well. The ZOPP model of community project planning was used and proved to be a useful tool for students who have limited time for planning, implementation and evaluation of a project.     

Entitlements,the Deficit,and Spending Caps

This article investigates three common perceptions about entitlement spending-that it is the primary cause of growing budget deficits, that nonmeans-tested entitlements (such as Social Security and Medicare) have grown faster than other entitlement programs, and that nonmeans-tested benefit programs are skewed toward the affluent. Drawing on data from the vast 30 years of federal spending and tabulations from the Current Population Survey, the article concludes that these perceptions are inaccurate. The article then examines recently proposed spending caps, finding that they would have had little impact on entitlement spending other than Medicare and Medicaid, but would have required very large cuts in those two programs. It discusses the mechanics of spending caps, their effect on the nature of entitlement benefits; and the feasibility of placing caps on cash versus in-kind entitlement benefits. It concludes that, while direct spending caps would in effect change entitlements into discretionary programs, caps are more likely to take the form of requirements for Congress to consider legislative changes if spending exceeds the cap.     

The Labor Market Orientation of Single Mothers on Welfare in The Netherlands

Since the implementation of the new General Assistance Act (1996) in The Netherlands, single parents on welfare have become obliged to seek work as soon as their youngest child has become 5 years old. This article presents a study of 1,049 Dutch single mothers on welfare. Using LISREL, a conceptual model is examined for the effects of both the past and current circumstances of the mothers on their labor orientation and on their steps toward a full‐time job. An individual mother's motivation to work is particularly related to the importance she attaches to caring (care ethos) as opposed to working (work ethos) and to the problems she anticipates in combining care and work.     

Work status, benefits, and financial resources among people with HIV/AIDS

With the advent of more advanced treatments and therapies, people with HIV/AIDS are experiencing significant improvements in their health, making many of their ongoing employment and career goals more realistic. However, people with HIV/AIDS continue to have major concerns regarding the impact of working on their benefits and entitlements, including apprehensions about potential economic hardships related to loss of financial supports and health insurance coverage. This article focuses on factors related to employment status, sources of health benefits, and entitlements among people with HIV/AIDS. In addition, results of the study demonstrate differences in employment status, benefit types, and the amount of financial support individuals receive based on gender.     

School breakfast clubs,children and family support†

School breakfast clubs are a form of before school provision serving breakfast to children who arrive early. This paper explores their potential to provide support for families at risk of social exclusion. A national evaluation of a Department of Health pilot initiative suggests that their provision can afford valued support to families coping with varying degrees of difficulty in their material, environmental, relational and social circumstances. Many parents regarded clubs as successful in encouraging children to eat breakfast, reducing pressures in the morning and providing an additional source of affordable, trusted child care to those in work, studying or seeking employment. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Rationality,culture and welfare entitlements: A note on change and adaptation

The interplay of rationality and culture in shaping patterns of moral responsibility is considered here in the context of economic entitlements which persons can claim on the basis of others' obligations to be responsive to their needs. Even when the moral obligations underlying such entitlements have the status of “sanctified” (Rappaport, 1971) cultural understandings, they may nonetheless be subject to change in ways which are consistent with materially rational, self-interested economic calculation. The role of two common forms of intra-societal cultural diversity in bringing this about is considered.     

The use of animal-assisted therapy in psychiatric nursing: the story of Timmy and Buddy

A therapy session gone wrong and a therapy dog in training having a bad day combined to remind those of us who work daily with people who have chronic, severe mental illnesses that our idea of what is successful is not always true. This is the story of how a tiny dog acting in a nontherapeutic way helped a young man learn how to get along better with other human beings, as well as how a nurse who thought she knew better learned a lesson about conflict resolution in human-animal relationships.     

Measuring policy entitlements at the micro-level: maternity and parental leave in Europe

Comparative social policy analysis has been shaped by the measurement of policy as a macro phenomenon. However, social policy theories have consistently asserted that policy entitlements vary across class, gender, ethnicity and the life-course. This paper synthesises a number of innovations to produce an approach which allows researchers to explore the policy heterogeneity within populations, across populations and over time. Using the example of maternity and parental leave, policy entitlements are identified through the calculation of financial support an individual would receive if they were to have a child, using a combination of legislative rules with representative survey sample. The results reveal far greater heterogeneity in policy entitlements than existing indicators suggest, with considerable implications for research on maternity and parental leave. This approach is not limited to maternity and parental leave benefits and demonstrates a way to explore comparative social policy in greater depth and detail.     

The Paradox of the Quality of Life of Adults with Learning Difficulties

This paper is based on an empirical survey conducted in 1995 in Hungary. Data came from a stratified random sample of about 1300 adults with learning difficulties from all over the country. The author combines qualitative and quantitative methods in analysing the quality of life of people with learning difficulties and takes into consideration that their quality of life is as much determined by sociological factors as by the biologically and educationally understood level of difficulties. The paper shows that success in education and in the labour market does not equate to successful social integration. The quality of life of adults with learning difficulties is sometimes better in social circumstances which are less favourable for high achievement in education and in the labour market. Though the people from more privileged backgrounds may seem to lead a more active and social everyday life than those with working class origins they are still considerably less integrated in their social environments.     

Moving the Boundaries of Feminist Social Work Education with Disabled People in the Neoliberal Era

Until recently social work education in Australia has either marginalised or neglected disability by omission. Given the increasing number of disabled people in the community, the teaching of social work within a disability studies emancipatory paradigm as an essential part of the curriculum is long overdue. As many social work educators have suggested, we are at a critical moment in Australia, where the policy environment in which social work is embedded has largely been reframed in line with neoliberal trends. For disabled people, this has meant an ongoing state campaign to diminish disability entitlements, from decreasing disability social security regimes through to the rationalisation of adult disability support and care schemes. Social workers are negotiating the competing demands of these policy constraints alongside the needs of the disabled people they work with. New moral dilemmas have emerged where they are actively faced with the question of ‘who to serve?’.     

Factors Related to Successful Outcomes Among Preschool Children Born to Low‐Income Adolescent Mothers

The purpose of this study was to describe how the experiences and circumstances of the most successful children born to low‐income adolescent mothers differed from the experiences and circumstances of the least successful children over the first 54 months of their lives. Success was defined as scoring in the top quartile for this sample on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test‐Revised (PPVT‐R) when the children were 54 months old and about to make the transition to kindergarten. The experiences of the 22 children with the highest scores on the PPVT‐R were contrasted with the experiences of the 22 children who had the lowest scores on the PPVT‐R for this sample. The two groups differed markedly on measures of caregiving and home environment assessed when the children were 12, 24, 36, and 54 months old. In addition, mothers of the most successful children achieved more years of education, were more likely to be employed, had fewer children on average, tended to live in more desirable neighborhoods, and were more likely to be living with a male partner. Case studies are also presented on four families (two from the most successful group and two from the least successful group) to further illustrate how the experiences and circumstances of children in the two groups differed.     

The gender division of housework after the first child: a comparison among Bulgaria,France and the Netherlands

ABSTRACT

In our study, we adopt a comparative-longitudinal perspective on the gender division of housework before and after the birth of the first child, exploiting the first two waves of the Gender and Generation Survey and comparing three countries belonging to different gender and welfare regimes (i.e. Bulgaria, France and the Netherlands). We find that childrearing everywhere triggers a re-traditionalisation, generating a more inegalitarian gender division of housework, yet with interesting differences across countries. Fixed-effect regression analyses of the pooled data show that changes when becoming parents are less pronounced in France with respect to Bulgaria and the Netherlands, more pronounced when she is low-educated. Moreover, when countries are analysed separately, it emerges that it is only in the Netherlands that traditionalisation around first childbirth is significantly lower in couples where the woman is middle- and high-educated compared to those where she is low-educated. Economic, cultural and institutional contexts do matter. Traditionalisation and within-couples polarisation is weaker in contexts where non-traditional attitudes are widespread, social policies are more defamilialising and more explicitly addressed also to men, and where part-time is not the main reconciliation strategy, as in France.     

Vulnerability in custody: perceptions and practices of police officers and criminal justice professionals in meeting the communication needs of offenders with learning disabilities and learning difficulties

Information provision and communication within the Criminal Justice System can be highly problematic for young people and adults with learning disabilities and difficulties. Paper-based communication is common, and is mandated for the provision of rights and entitlements in custody, but such communication can be poorly understood, potentially leading to miscarriages of justice. This article uses the piloting of a more accessible version of the rights and entitlements notice in custody to explore the communication practices with vulnerable detained persons from the perspectives of professionals within the Criminal Justice System. As a legally mandated text in a context heavily imbued with organisational power, the rights and entitlements notice in custody has sociological significance as a lens through which organisational practices, and understandings, can be examined. The stressful, fast-paced and transitional context of custody shapes communication and interaction in ways that are challenging for the detained person and also the professionals who support them.     

Compassion fatigue in marriage and family therapy: implications for therapists and clients

Given that marriage and family therapists are exposed to a wide range of circumstances that leave them uniquely vulnerable to experiencing compassion fatigue, it is important to examine the stresses and hazards they face and what those consequences mean for both themselves and clients. It is essential that they identify how compassion fatigue negatively affects the therapeutic relationship and overall treatment outcome as well as that of the personal life of the family therapist. The marriage and family therapist is responsible and ethically obligated to identify and implement ways in which he or she can prevent and remedy compassion fatigue.     

Battered women who were "being killed and survived it": straight talk from survivors

Findings from police reports and interviews with women who have survived an attempted domestic homicide revealed patterns in their experiences and sources of distress. The build-up in the year prior to the near-lethal attack involved tension from ongoing contact with an angry, controlling batterer. Most typically the perpetrator was an alcoholic or drug addict, a gun owner, and, if his victim had left him, her stalker. In the majority of cases, the victim had either left or announced that she was leaving the relationship. While he had often threatened her life and she feared him, she typically did not think him capable of killing her. She described the attack as shocking and terrifying, and she felt certain she was going to die. In the immediate aftermath, she received some support, but as time went by, she felt isolated and alone. Ultimately, the women became convinced that they must rely on their "inner strength" to get on with their lives.     

Confessions of an Identity Junkie

How is it that sexual identity can become such a troubling preoccupation? In this paper, the author explores the problems she has experienced regarding sexual identification due to fluctuating desires and changing circumstances. Charting a course through her personal life using the pioneering theoretical work of Jeffrey Weeks, Judith Butler, and Donna Haraway, she intimately examines the contradictions, difficulties, and possible political functions of sexual identification.     

Accountability and the fairness bias: the effects of effort vs. luck

According to the principle of accountability a person’s fair allocation takes into account the input-relevant variables she can influence, like effort, but not the variables she cannot influence, like luck. We study redistribution behavior in a real effort-task experiment, where luck influences production in three versions that differ in their effort-relatedness: luck comes either as wage luck, endowment luck or payment luck. We confirm that in a base treatment, i.e., in absence of luck, subjects base their allocation decisions largely on effort. When luck is present behavior changes. While we find that redistribution behavior of high performers in the real effort-task is affected by wage luck, we find that endowment luck affects mostly redistribution behavior of low performers. Furthermore, when introducing payment luck, i.e., redistribution of certain versus probabilistic payments, we find that allocations are more selfish for probabilistic payments.     

Creating moral economies: Reciprocity and welfare entitlements on the Yukon mining frontier

The Alaska-Yukon mining frontier in the late nineteenth century witnessed the creation, and subsequent abandonment, of a moral economy in which all community members recognized an obligation to indiscriminately contribute to one another's material support. The case of the Yukon miners suggests that in the absence of bonds of kinship, coupled with the lack of any strongly corporate organization or effective authority, investments in indirect reciprocity can nonetheless provide the basis for the community-wide extension of interpersonal welfare entitlements. But reciprocity's capacity to sustain such an extension of entitlements also appears in this case to have been significantly constrained by demographic variables.     

Playstation and the Power of Unexpected Consequences

It has been suggested that research business strategy is like studying specimens on a wall. By examining successful stories, one can easily identify the strategic factors responsible for such a success, and the greater the success, the more evident those factors are. Timing, strategic positioning, pricing policies, lead-time - everything goes back to the place where it fits best, like a beautiful mosaic. Even competitors' mistakes become more evident, their dull misunderstanding of what the winner was planning as every successful move leads to an even more successful one. The case of Sony PlayStation, the most successful digital games console ever, is no exception and the temptation to explain the rationale behind such an achievement is almost irresistible. As this paper tries to suggest, sometimes ex- post rationalizations hide or avoid part of the truth. Despite PlayStation's success, Sony's strategic choices were, on more than one occasion, driven more by lucky coincidence than by long-range planning. Furthermore, this paper shows how some of the strategic factors behind PlayStation's winning run sprang from decisions taken by lack of alternatives, and that only in the very end was Sony able to understand their full profit potential.     

Impact of the National Minimum Wage on Disabled People

The survey reported here found disparities in the impact of the introduction of the National Minimum Wage on disabled people. These were associated with age, gender, impairment and type of employment setting. The main determinant of whether individuals gained from the NMW was their status as claimants of welfare benefits. We also found evidence that paid hours had been reduced to implement the NMW with no net increase in earnings, possibly to enable people to retain benefits entitlements. We make recommendations about how the anomalies can be tackled. It may be unrealistic to expect the Act to have been implemented fully so soon after it became law and some of the anomalies found may eventually disappear. However, many of the inequalities uncovered by this survey are not addressed by the NMW, specifically those inequalities associated with impairment and gender.