Anxiety and child protection – implications for practitioner–parent relations

Social work practitioners face powerful existential threats in child protection. Core aspects of anxiety and their significance for practitioner–parent relations are identified. Social and psychoanalytic theories are utilized to suggest that the production of anxiety in child protection stems from multiple sources and that insufficient attention has been paid to the social context of poverty and disadvantage. Menzies' core analytic categories of primary and secondary anxiety are applied and extended to take account of specific dimensions of the social and organizational context of child protection practice for social work. Processing the anxiety is central to practitioner–parent relations that lie at the heart of the protection of children.     

Women and men – same problems, different treatment

The focus on difference between men and women has been important in the development of gender-specific treatment for alcohol and drug problems. The aim of this article is to examine the views of alcohol and drug treatment staff on differences between men and women in treatment and compare men and women in treatment on issues related to staff attitudes. One data set consists of questionnaires sent to staff working with alcohol and drug problems in Stockholm County (n = 918). Another data set consists of interviews with women and men in treatment for alcohol and drug problems in Stockholm (n = 1865). The results show that staff experience differences between men and women both in their problems and in how they should be treated. Some of these differences are supported by the comparison of women and men in the client-data, but mostly the differences are relatively small or even non-existent.     

Mental & Social Diagnosis and the English Prison Commission 1914–1939

In this article the author argues that there was a strengthening optimism about the value of psychological treatment between 1914 and 1939 amongst medical personnel employed by the English Prison Commission. This optimism contrasted with the pessimistic eugenic notion that there was an increasing and unreformable underclass which transmitted its inferior mental and physical characteristics biologically. Prison Commission medical staff became openly critical of eugenic proposals during the interwar years and, advised by a number of its medical personnel such as medical inspector and later Medical Commissioner William Norwood East, the Prison Commission was influenced towards the mental hygienism advocated by a growing number of American and British clinicians. Fherefore the Commission initiated a number of experiments in psychological treatment and psychoanalysis in English prisons.     

Beyond benevolence – solidarity and welfare state transition in Sweden

For many decades the Swedish welfare system has served as an archetype of the modern comprehensive welfare state. When economic recession hit Sweden in the beginning of the 1990s, a period of half a century of continuous expansion and reforms in the welfare sector came to an end. The economic downturn enforced rationing measures in most welfare programs and was accompanied by a move towards privatisation of local welfare services and an endeavour to initiate market incentives in the care-giving systems. The focus was increasingly directed on welfare as a financial burden, and the issue of how diminishing resources should be allocated ranked high on the political agenda. In this article we depart from the concept of solidarity and discuss the development of Swedish welfare and welfare opinion. First, we articulate various representations of the concept of solidarity – societal cohesion, individual support for comprehensive welfare and the amount of universality in the provision of care. Second, we describe some fundamental traits in the route taken by Swedish welfare during the 1990s, focusing especially on care of elderly and the demographic challenge of an ageing population. Third, we summarise the evolution of public opinion regarding welfare provision and discuss the determinants of its variations. The article concludes with a discussion of how the (once salient) features of universalism have been affected by the development during the past decade, and the role of popular support in the route ahead for Swedish welfare.     

Social Background and Placement Course – The Case of Denmark

The scope of this article, founded on a nationwide survey in Denmark, is first to describe the social characteristics of families with a child placed outside home, and, further, to examine whether differences in regard to the parents' social background are correlated with different placement courses. A range of hypotheses on the correlation between social background and the course of placement are examined. It appears, for example, that children from low-resource families come into contact with the social system earlier, and are placed outside the home at an earlier age than children from high-resource families. Low-resource children are more often placed in foster care, and are more often subject to contact restrictions. The article discusses whether these differences reflect a socio-cultural discrimination. Secondly, a discussion is raised whether the supportive measures available are adequate in relation to the serious problems of the families concerned.     

Youth unemployment and mental health – gender differences and economic stress

This article accounts for a study among 81 unemployed people under 25 years of age and 143 youth trainees in a small municipality in central Sweden. The results show an explicit relationship between unemployment and mental ill health among young people. One unemployed man of four and every second unemployed woman feels that the mental well-being grew worse when they became unemployed. The opposite is experienced by one male youth trainee of four and four female youth trainees of ten, who state that their mental well-being improved when they got into a youth training program after having earlier been unemployed. The results also show that young people with poor finances on the whole have more mental troubles and anxiety about the future than young people with good finances have. The article discusses possible explanations for the patterns with respect to gender and the private financial situations that appear in the results.     

Fodor's Impasse – a Converse Perspective and a Way Out

In recent publications, Fodor points out a basic impasse that the representational-computational view of mind confronts. Mental representations have to serve two functions—to be the substrate of mental computations and to be the carriers of meaning. Fodor points out that these two functions cannot be brought together and concludes that semantics is not part of psychology. On the basis of similar observations, I suggest drawing another conclusion, namely, that the premises of the representational-computational view are wrong, and that psychology is not mentalistic. The discussion presents a fundamental contrast between two notions of the key term semantics. These, in turn, define two different perspectives for cognitive research. A third perspective for the study of meaning and cognition is suggested. With it, it is argued, the Fodorian impasse is avoided.     

Children in Residential and Foster Care – a Swedish Example

The article reports on a longitudinal study of children placed in a children's home in Malmö, Sweden, at the beginning of the 1980s. The 26 children, placed when younger than four years of age and staying more than four weeks in the children's home, were followed up three and nine months after leaving the children's home as well as five, ten and fifteen years later. Interviewing the parties concerned was the predominant research method. Twenty of the 26 children in the research group also had later experiences of out-of-home care, including foster care, in addition to the stay at the children's home. This article is about them, 15–20 years old when interviewed in the latest follow-up study. Three aspects of "outcome" are focused on: the degree of stability in the children's living conditions; relationships to parents and foster parents; well-being and emotional and behavior problems. Bearing in mind that the concept of well-being is relative, a cautious conclusion is that a third of the children in the study experienced well-being, a third felt "o.k.," and a third had serious problems, including criminal activities and drugs. The somewhat unclear connection between well-being, stability in living conditions, and sense of family belonging is discussed.     

Social integration and suicide: Denmark, 1906–2006

Research on the relationship between social integration and suicide rates has neglected a historical perspective. Analyses are often based on relatively short time periods where there may not be enough variation in integration to affect the national suicide rate, or where overall integration levels are not low enough to buttress a link between a specific index of low integration, such as divorce, and suicide. The present investigation contributes to the literature by testing a hypothesis on domestic integration and suicide over a century, the longest period studied to date, encompassing periods of low and high overall social integration, and emergent risk and protective factors. Data are available for core variables for Denmark, 1906–2006. Annual data include those on suicide, and indicators of integration (divorces, births, marriages), as well as for economic strain (unemployment) and time trends. A log linear Poisson model is estimated, which explores the central divorce–suicide relationship under controls for confounders. Controlling for confounders, a one percent increase in divorce increases male suicides by 0.52% and female suicides by 1.12%. As anticipated, marriages decrease suicide: a one percent increase in marriages reduces suicide by 0.77% for men and by 0.63% for women. The trend in divorce, in particular, offers accurate predictions of suicide throughout the century. The relationship between divorce and suicide over a century is robust. The results offer the strongest support to date in support of a social integration model based on long term historical data on suicide and divorce.