The feminizing of neglect

This paper is concerned with understandings of neglect in child care social work. It is a theoretical discussion in which the social construction of neglect is examined through an analysis of the relationship between 'care' and neglect. In particular, I explore the gendered nature of 'care' and the possible feminizing of its correlate, neglect. I consider the links between gender, race and caring, and how these interact in 'achieving' femininity, and go on to look at the relationship between ideas of care and the 'natural' mother. This, in turn, is linked to a discussion of social work responses to neglect. I argue the need for feminist analyses of neglect as a significant area of abuse – analyses that can parallel the important insights that have been offered in relation to other areas of child abuse, and can contribute to the development of effective social work intervention strategies.     

Experimental evidence on case-based decision theory

This paper starts out from the proposition that case-based decision theory (CBDT) is an appropriate tool to explain human decision behavior in situations of structural ignorance. Although the developers of CBDT suggest its reality adequacy, CBDT has not yet been tested empirically very often, especially not in repetitive decision situations. Therefore, our main objective is to analyse the decision behavior of subjects in a repeated-choice experiment by comparing the explanation power of CBDT to reinforcement learning and to classical decision criteria under uncertainty namely maximin, maximax, and pessimism-optimism. Our findings substantiate a predominant significantly higher validity of CBDT compared to the classical criteria and to reinforcement learning. For this reason, the experimental results confirm the suggested reality adequacy of CBDT in repetitive decision situations of structural ignorance.     

Promising practices in understanding and treating child neglect

Child neglect is the most common type of child maltreatment in the United States. However, services provided to families who neglect often fail to address and treat the primary concerns associated with child neglect. The information provided in this paper identifies the primary problems contributing to child neglect, and some promising practices in child welfare casework that address these problems and show positive outcomes for the children and families who experience child neglect. Knowledge pertaining to assessment skills, treatment abilities, and model programmes is provided.     

Recognizing and addressing child neglect in affluent families

This paper explores how social workers intervene with affluent parents when there are child protection concerns about neglect. Based on data gathered from a small‐scale exploratory qualitative study with 30 practitioners from 12 local authorities across England, this study examined three overarching questions: (a) How do social workers identify risk factors for vulnerable children in affluent circumstances? (b) Which factors inhibit or enable social workers' engagement with resistant affluent parents when there are child protection concerns? (c) What kind of skills, knowledge, and experience is necessary for social workers to effectively assert their professional authority with affluent parents when there are concerns about abuse and neglect? The findings revealed that indicators of neglect can be difficult to identify and challenging to respond to when parents are affluent. Results indicate that social workers have to navigate complex power relationships with parents who are able to use their class privileges to resist their interventions. The paper concludes with a discussion of social workers' skills and capacities for engaging highly‐resistant affluent parents in the child protection system.     

Welfare functions and group decisions

The paper shows that Pareto optimal sharing rules imply that group decisions will be made unanimously. An example is given.     

Preference reversals and probabilistic decisions

Preference reversals occur when different (but formally equivalent) elicitation methods reveal conflicting preferences over two alternatives. This paper shows that when people have fuzzy preferences, i.e. when they decide in a probabilistic manner, their observed decisions can generate systematic preference reversals. A simple model of probabilistic choice and valuation can account for a higher incidence of standard (nonstandard) preference reversals for certainty (probability) equivalents and it can also rationalize the existence of strong reversals. An important methodological contribution of the paper is a new definition of a probabilistic certainty/probability equivalent of a risky lottery.     

Emotional abuse and neglect: a time for reappraisal

This paper explores, from a UK perspective, issues surrounding policy and practice in cases of neglect, which inevitably involves emotional abuse. It does not address cases of emotional abuse in which neglect does not occur. The paper argues that there is a sufficient body of knowledge on the necessary conditions for healthy child development and factors associated with psychological/ emotional disorders in childhood for social workers to be more proactive in work with such cases. There is, however, a need for this evidence to be assembled and organized in ways which will be useful to social workers. Nonetheless, intervention in such cases is unlikely to become more effective unless some of the reasons for the'neglect of neglecf are better understood and addressed. In the second part of the paper, a range of factors influencing such work is considered, related to the professional, organizational and legal context within which social workers in the UK operate.
The paper draws on an ESRC funded project, which ended in 1995, of social workers' judgements in cases of child sexual abuse and neglect     

Lattices,bargaining and group decisions

This essay aims at constructing an abstract mathematical system which, when interpreted, serves to portray group-choices among alternatives that need not be quantifiable. The system in question is a complete distributive lattice, on which a class of non-negative real-valued homomorphisms is defined. Reinforced with appropriate axioms, this class becomes a convex distributive lattice. If this lattice is equipped with a suitable measure, and if the mentioned class of homomorphisms is equipped with a metric, then the class and its convex sets are seen to possess certain characteristic properties. The main result (Theorem 6) follows from a combination of these results and a famous result due to Choquet.The mathematical scheme is then interpreted in the subject-language of choice among alternatives. It is shown, by means of an example, that the system furnishes all the ingredients for describing multi-group choices. Whether or not the same ingredients are also adequate for a behavioural theory of multi-group choices is an issue that will not be gone into. However, the example effectively illustrates how a process of bargaining can be described with the aid of the mathematical scheme.In the second example, a class of bargaining situations is modelled in the symbolism of linear programming with several objective functions combined with unknown weights; the cost vectors in such formulations are identified with homomorphisms, and the main theorem of this essay is applied.     

A multidisciplinary approach to treating child neglect

Although the multidisciplinary team approach is useful in treating child abuse and neglect, it is underutilized in the first instance and rarely employed in the second. The authors discuss the rationale, process, function, and effectiveness of such a team in dealing with child neglect.     

Statistical decisions under ambiguity

This article provides unified axiomatic foundations for the most common optimality criteria in statistical decision theory. It considers a decision maker who faces a number of possible models of the world (possibly corresponding to true parameter values). Every model generates objective probabilities, and von Neumann–Morgenstern expected utility applies where these obtain, but no probabilities of models are given. This is the classic problem captured by Wald’s (Statistical decision functions, 1950) device of risk functions. In an Anscombe–Aumann environment, I characterize Bayesianism (as a backdrop), the statistical minimax principle, the Hurwicz criterion, minimax regret, and the “Pareto” preference ordering that rationalizes admissibility. Two interesting findings are that c-independence is not crucial in characterizing the minimax principle and that the axiom which picks minimax regret over maximin utility is von Neumann–Morgenstern independence.     

Narratives, community and land use decisions

This article explores the narrative character of community, arguing that communities are intrinsically storied. Narratives are conceptualized as social acts and are thereby of inherent importance to social scientific endeavor. Following Weber, narratives also are seen to be entrenched in institutions and in the political economy of communities. State tourism and land use decisions are suggested as ideographic situations in which such entrenchment is found.     

When risky decisions generate externalities

Many risky decisions generate either positive externalities (e.g., opening a small business, engaging in research and development, vaccinating) or negative externalities (e.g., smoking, reckless driving, unprotected sex). I develop a new experimental framework for evaluating risk tolerance when risky decisions that generate externalities by modifying the allocation task of Gneezy and Potters (1997). In the ‘risk with externalities’ framework, for each unit increase in a risky allocation, an external cost or benefit is imposed upon a group member. I further vary the magnitude of the external effect to investigate the sensitivity of risk taking to the marginal external effect. Results indicate that risky decisions are driven by a combination of social and non-social factors. When individuals both impose and receive externalities, the preferred level of risk taking is lower if the externality is negative, regardless of the magnitude of the marginal external effect. Risk taking is then further affected by the magnitude of the marginal external effect. For individuals who only impose externalities, behavior is consistent with a disutility from imposing harm (but not a sensitivity to the magnitude of the external effect). For those who only receive externalities, individuals increase (decrease) their risky allocation when they are in a decision environment where they receive external benefits (costs). Additional treatments suggest that results are consistent with decreasing relative risk aversion plus an additional disutility from either imposing or receiving harmful externalities.

     

Insurance decisions for low-probability losses

It is widely accepted that individuals tend to underinsure against low-probability, high-loss events relative to high-probability, low-loss events. This conventional wisdom is based largely on field studies, as there is very little experimental evidence. We reexamine this issue with an experiment that accounts for possible confounds in prior insurance experiments. Our results are counter to the prior experimental evidence, as we observe subjects buying more insurance for lower-probability events than for higher-probability events, given a constant expected loss and load factor. Insofar as underinsurance for catastrophic risk is observed in the field, our results suggest that this can be attributed to factors other than only the relative probability of the loss events.

Framing,probability distortions,and insurance decisions

A series of studies examines whether certain biases in probability assessments and perceptions of loss, previously found in experimental studies, affect consumers' decisions about insurance. Framing manipulations lead the consumers studied here to make hypothetical insurance-purchase choices that violate basic laws of probability and value. Subjects exhibit distortions in their perception of risk and framing effects in evaluating premiums and benefits. Illustrations from insurance markets suggest that the same effects occur when consumers make actual insurance purchases.Presented at the Conference onMaking Decisions about Liability and Insurance, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 6–7 December, 1991. This research is supported by National Science Foundation Grant SES88-09299. The authors thank Jon Baron, Colin Camerer, Neil Doherty, Paul Kleindorfer, Amos Tversky, and two anonymous referees for many helpful comments. We particularly acknowledge the efforts of Matthew Robinson and Penny Pollister for their help with data analysis.     

Frames and decisions under uncertainty in economics theory

Theory and Decision -     

'School was just a nightmare': childhood abuse and neglect and school experiences

Children who have experienced abuse display significant difficulties in dealing with all aspects of the school environment. This paper examines the experiences at school of a group of respondents who had been subject to abuse and neglect during their childhood and adolescence. A qualitative research approach, utilizing in-depth interviews, was used to explore their perspectives and insights in relation to their experiences. The findings of this study show how the various forms of abuse and neglect experienced in their families had consequences for them in the school setting. A further important finding was a lack of professional student welfare support for the interviewees at school. Implications for prevention and intervention approaches in relation to both policy and service delivery are outlined.     

One-shot decisions under Linear Partial Information

This paper purports to make a contribution to the analysis of a class of decisions that has received little attention in the literature, although it appears to be of considerable importance. Certain decisions cannot be repeated but must be made under fuzziness in the sense that state probabilities are not exactly known (LPI-fuzziness). The analysis of Linear Partial Information is applied to the principle of neglecting small probabilities found by Allais (1953), enabling the decision maker to break away from the maxmin criterion. By systematic exploitation of the fuzzy information available, strategies are shown to exist that provide payoffs whose lower bound exceeds the maxmin benchmark with sufficiently high probability. The same methodology is shown to be useful for dealing with the case of only ordinal preference orderings that are so typical of those crucial decisions that may be made only once in a lifetime.     

Young on decisions concerning medical aid

Robert Young's recent article on the distribution of scarce medical resources suffers from inexplicitness concerning the foundations of his moral judgments.¹ The purpose of this note is to point out two related lines of thought which he ignores but which threaten to outflank his position.