Evaluating Therapeutic Intervention with Sexually Abused Children

The progress of sexually abused children attending community-based treatment programmes run by selected voluntary agencies was evaluated on several different dimensions. By the end of the treatment programmes, improvement was apparent in the children's scores on the Children's Depression Inventory and self-esteem scores and in behaviour (CBCL) reports from parents. Young people over the age of 11 years reported for themselves improvements in the CBCL total problem and internalizing scores, but no improvement in the externalizing scores. The reasons why many therapists had difficulty providing all the necessary information were explored in interviews with senior managers and suggestions are made for improving the ways in which abused children's progress through treatment can be evaluated. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Storytelling, conflict and diversity

Oral storytelling can be effective as a tool in community development.The author explores the potential of storytelling in relationto a number of community projects in the UK and elsewhere.     

A Blumerian Approach to Storytelling

Blumer's work on life histories and symbolic interactionism represents an important contribution in the twenty-first century. I join his work with research on storytelling to build a Blumerian approach to storytelling. This approach holds that social actors use stories to construct subjective meanings, stories exist in some social context, stories are told or written for some audience, a wide range of social processes produce stories, the temporal sequence of storytelling audiences is important, social actors use interactional techniques of showing story preferences, and symbolic structures and narrative linkages are the resources social actors use to compose stories. Future research can continue to develop this approach.     

The Magnificent Majie Storytelling Fair

EVERY Lantern Festival, a storytelling fair is held in Majie, a market town with a population of 5,000, located 15 kilometers south of Baofeng County in Henan Province. The third day of the festival, or the 13th day of the first lunar month, is the most formal part of this fair, hence the name of the Baofeng 13 Storytelling Fair at Majie. On this day, more than 1,000 Chinese folk artists gather here from all parts of the country. They put up simple stages or booths on the river banks, on mounds or in wheat fields in an area of about two square kilometers. Alone or in pairs, in threes or fives, facing each other or back to back, they tell story after story to the accompaniment of their traditional instruments: suona (a woodwind     

Identifying Therapeutic Action in an Attachment-Centered Intervention with High Risk Families

This paper describes an attachment-based intervention for mothers known to Child Welfare Services where past and current trauma complicates family preservation and promotion of child well being. The first part of the paper describes the innovative Attachment-Centered Parent–Child Therapy service that has been delivered to high-risk families with children from 0 to 3 years of age. The intervention uses a group format that has the added benefits of enhancing social support and being highly cost effective. The intervention also integrates video filming both in terms of capturing essential features of the group intervention for review and supervision of clinical staff, and is fundamental in the observation-based empirical assessments. Quantitative data from an initial pilot study supporting the efficacy of the intervention is presented. As well, qualitative data is presented including a case study that highlights therapeutic action shown to positively impact the quality of the mother–child relationship.     

A Grand Gathering of Storytelling Artists

The grand storytelling fair held in Majie Township, Hebei Province every year, has a history of more than 400 years. ● Most of the stories used to be based on ancient legends and folk stories. Nowadays, there are also many newly-written pieces about people's lives in modern times. ● Every year, the grand storytelling performance attracts hundreds and thousands of locals and visitors from several neigh-boring provinces.     

How Therapeutic Intervention Does Create the Prerequisites of Change in Human Relations

The purpose of this paper is to stress our belief that therapeutic intervention does not have the power to create durable, predetermined changes in human systems. Still, a number of therapists seem to feel that certain adjustments are necessary if improvement is to occur and try to convince families to adopt them. Such partial moves ignore the question of what has prevented the family from discovering such beneficial adaptations on its own.
We suggest that the basic rules of the family prohibit it from changing. Tb stimulate the inherent healing capacities of human systems, a preferable goal might be to validate the present functioning of the family through an understanding of the different levels of its self perception (phenomenological model, mythical model). If this is done effectively, a possible reformulation of the relationship is truly facilitated. Relations between the participants will continue, but will no longer be what they were before. The effectiveness of the intervention is confirmed by the appearance of new beliefs, new perceptions. Any behavioral modifications shown by family members are logical consequences of their new conception of the relationship, not the causes of it.     

Treatment of Adult Sexual Offenders: A Therapeutic Cognitive-Behavioural Model of Intervention

SUMMARY

Recent research indicates that, of the various forms of treatment available to sexual offenders, cognitive-behavioural methods are likely to have the greatest impact in reducing rates of sexual re-offending. Cognitive-behavioural treatment typically targets attitudes that support sexual offending, anger management, victim empathy, deviant sexual arousal, and relapse prevention. More recently, treatment has targeted cognitive processes more generally, management of other emotional states in addition to anger, intimacy deficits, and risk self-management (Marshall, Anderson, & Fernandez, 1999; Yates, Goguen, Nicholaichuk, Williams, & Long, 2000). This article describes the components of cognitive-behavioural treatment with sexual offenders, including recent developments, assessment, treatment methods, and the importance of therapist characteristics on the therapeutic process and on treatment outcome.     

Getting Beneath the Surface: Scapegoating and the Systems Approach in a Post-Munro World

The publication of the Munro Review of Child Protection: Final Report (2011b, Department for Education, London) was the culmination of an extensive and expansive consultation process into the current state of child protection practice across the UK. Despite the concern about ‘blame’ within the report, there is, surprisingly, at no point an explicit reference to the dynamics and practices of ‘scapegoating’ that are so closely associated with organisational blame cultures. This paper examines this gap in understanding of the recurrence of shortcomings in child care social work practice and suggests that unless the dynamics of scapegoating are more fully understood, new developments, such as the systems approach advocated by Munro, will fall short of their potential impact. A critical review of existing understanding of scapegoating is presented and the paper concludes by outlining initiatives to counter the detrimental effect of scapegoating of everyday practice.     

Scapegoating culture: Misunderstanding organizational culture as the problem in carceral institutions and beyond

Organizational culture is an obscure and poorly understood part of organizational life. In scholarly work, researchers use organizational culture as both a catch‐all term and a black box of intrigue. The former suggests its omnipresence and ability to take the blame for all that ills organizations. The latter denotes a mythical and misunderstood invisible cloak that covers organizations and organizational life, yet is misconstrued, complex, and confusing. This paper presents a brief summary of the multidisciplinary history of organizational culture as a concept and operationalized term while simultaneously suggesting our knowledge of organizational culture remains at its infancy. Using prisons as a case study example, the authors consider how better to unpack organizational culture using sound and rigorous qualitative methods with careful attention to sampling and researcher–subject collaboration. Concluding thoughts note the importance of using culture as a dependent, rather than independent variable, so scholars will stop scapegoating culture as the answer to why organizational processes and outcomes fail and will instead recognize the study of culture as the problem itself.     

Overcoming Future Professionals’ Fear of Digital Storytelling

ABSTRACT

Digital storytelling assessments at university can develop emerging human service and social workers’ skills in contemporary social media production and related advocacy. Despite growing interest in digital storytelling in these disciplines, there is little support for developing the technical sides of the practice. This article shares key learnings from an Australian teaching and learning project used to develop a digital storytelling module for social work and human services students at university who are not filmmakers. Students across a range of courses undertook digital storytelling assessments using the module. A key finding was that students still experienced considerable fear but were able to turn that into significant personal and professional development. This article explores these and other key learnings from the project and offers tips for others wishing to implement digital storytelling.

IMPLICATIONS

• Emerging social work and human services professionals studying at university often exhibit fear and resistance to new tasks such as digital storytelling. Such students need to be supported to navigate that discomfort to achieve learning.

• Students can be supported using online modules that support the technical and creative sides of digital storytelling.

• This project found that students were able to develop confidence and skills in digital storytelling after completing this module and assignment.

     

Individual Counseling for Sexually Abused Children: A Role for Animals and Storytelling

This article addresses the use of animal assisted therapy in individual counseling for sexually abused children. It focuses on how the animal can help the sexually abused child disclose abuse and express feelings. Storytelling forms a part of the treatment process. The author's clinical experience at Project Against Sexual Abuse of Appalachian Children in Knoxville, Tennessee, forms the basis for the article.     

Storytelling as an educational strategy for older adults with chronic illness

As the population of older adults with chronic illness continues to increase, it is imperative to implement patient education strategies that are designed to elicit information and help health practitioners understand the world of the older adult. This article describes how storytelling, grounded in the basic principles of gerogogy, serves as an effective teaching and learning patient education strategy for older adults with--or without--chronic disease.     

Charismatizing the Routine: Storytelling for Meaning and Agency in the Burning Man Organization

Expanding organizations face the routinization of charisma dilemma in which rationalization, or everyday organizing activities, drains meaning and depresses agency. Using an ethnographic study of the organization behind the annual Burning Man event, I show how storytelling can combat disenchantment by promoting consideration of agency and meaning-making. This research demonstrates how storytelling infuses organizational rationality with meaning and agency, thereby ??charismatizing the routine.?? Through storytelling, people can derive meaning from even the most mundane routines and inspire listeners to imagine possibilities not covered by rules or conventions. Stories also stave off bureaucratic ritualism by clarifying the boundaries between appropriate and inappropriate activities, encouraging a range of actions over coercive restrictions.