myCourtroom: Rosie’s family go to court; the use of simulations in preparing social workers for court

The role of social workers in court, how they prepare, train, write and present their reports, has been the focus of much debate. Key messages from research tell us that social workers often find court work stressful; they can lack confidence in writing reports giving evidence and being cross-examined. Pre-qualification training in this area can be patchy, with many workers reporting they often learn ‘on the job.’ This article documents the journey from analysing primary and secondary research findings, via a partnership between the University of Kent Centre for Child Protection and Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), to develop a training simulation for practitioners to increase their knowledge, preparation and practice for court. The partnership turned these research findings into an interactive, immersive simulation to give practitioners the space to reflect upon and critique their experiences of court. Findings from an initial evaluation of the simulation were positive with participants highly rating its usefulness in developing courtroom skills and knowledge.     

Internalizing and externalizing symptoms among unaccompanied refugee and Italian adolescents

This study investigated the prevalence of emotional and behavioral symptoms in unaccompanied refugee adolescents living in Italy; an area which remains under-researched despite the relatively high number of asylum seekers registered in Italy compared to other industrialized countries. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) for 6–18 year-olds was completed by a social worker or parent for each of the 120 participating adolescents; sixty male unaccompanied refugee adolescents and sixty male native Italian adolescents. The paper presents findings that illustrate high levels of emotional and behavioral problems in unaccompanied refugee youth living in Italy. On all components of the CBCL, unaccompanied refugee adolescents were found to present with significantly more problems, as reported by social workers, compared to the Italian group of adolescents. In the light of these results, the importance of interventions and culturally sensitive therapeutic programs for refugee youth is discussed.     

Social Skills in Children Adopted From Socially-Emotionally Depriving Institutions

This study assessed social skills in post-institutionalized (PI) children with respect to age at adoption, age at assessment, and gender. Parent ratings of social skills (Social Skills Rating System) and behavior problems (Child Behavior Checklist) were obtained for 214 children and 127 adolescents who were adopted from socially-emotionally depriving Russian institutions. Results showed that children adopted before 18 months of age have better social skills than those adopted after this age; those assessed in childhood demonstrate better social skills than those assessed in adolescence. PI females, especially later-adopted adolescents, have particularly poor social skills. Children with poor social skills tend to have higher rates of behavior problems.     

Specifying links between infants' theory of mind,associative learning,and selective trust

The psychological mechanisms underlying infants' selective social learning are currently a subject of controversy. The main goal of the present study was to contribute data to this debate by investigating whether domain-specific or domain-general abilities guide infants' selectivity. Eighteen-month-olds observed a reliable and an unreliable speaker, and then completed a forced-choice word learning paradigm, two theory of mind tasks, and an associative learning task. Results revealed that infants showed sensitivity to the verbal competence of the speaker. Additionally, infants with superior knowledge inference abilities were less likely to learn from the unreliable speaker. No link was observed between selective social learning and associative learning skills. These results replicate and extend previous findings demonstrating that socio-cognitive abilities are linked to infants' selective social learning.     

Class Domination and Ideological Hegemony*

Sociological theory poses the issue of whether ideational or coercive factors provide the central basls of social order. The former view maintains (and requires) that a value consensus exist in the empirical world; the latter assumes the existence of a ruling class which dominates the ideational institutions of the society. A preliminary scrutiny of available evidence suggests that: (1) a value consensus does not exist, and (2) there is a high concentration of wealth and economic control which appears to extend into vital political and ideological areas, thereby implying the existence of a dominant or ruling class. Based upon these conclusions, the concept of ideological hegemony is introduced as a significant component of a Marxist view of social order. The hegemonic process is described and available evidence is examined in the areas of political socialization and mass media. A pattern in which debate and discussion are circumscribed while alternative values and world views are ignored or suppressed was found to characterize these two areas. This pattern was seen to provide further support for the Marxist view that an ideological hegemony imposed by the dominant class is the ideational manifestation of a social order based upon coercion.     

Confidentiality: Issues in working with self-harming adolescents

Although clinical work with adolescents has long been recognized as technically difficult, ethical considerations may present an even greater challenge to the clinician. This is particularly true for social workers who work with adolescents who manifest self-harming behavior. This paper examines the ethical dilemmas inherent in clinical work with self-harming adolescents and illustrates the need to include a model for ethical decision making as an essential element in competent social work practice. Moreover, the analysis of the clinical situation underscores the importance of under-standing the contemporary debate on children's rights.     

Tailoring a Parenting Curriculum for the Needs of Pregnant Adolescents in The Bahamas

Adolescence marks the transition from childhood into adulthood. For pregnant female adolescents, the transition is to motherhood as well as adulthood. They must not only deal with the physical and emotional changes of adolescence but learn how to become mothers. This article provides recommendations for enhancing a parenting skills curriculum for pregnant adolescents based on the research of the primary author with a cohort in an alternative school in Nassau, the Bahamas and follow-up discussions with alumni of the program.     

Learning to gamble: early gambling experiences among young people in Denmark

This article presents results from the first phase of a longitudinal qualitative study of gambling among young people in Denmark. The longitudinal study is designed to capture the trajectories of young gamblers and to explore how social and cultural factors and processes impact on young people's gambling careers. The first stage of analysis places a special emphasis on young people's introduction to gambling and the social contexts of these early gambling experiences. Theoretically, this first study is guided by a symbolic interactionist approach. We conclude that early experiences with gambling are socially mediated and that significant social contexts such as the family and peer groups form important contexts of these early experiences. Our evidence suggest that becoming engaged in gambling is a social process involving a transfer of skills and knowledge in which novices learn how to play and to attribute specific meanings to gambling. Overall, our findings indicate that young people start gambling not because of purely individual characteristics or deviant motivations but through social processes within significant social networks. Implications for prevention and further research are briefly discussed.     

Topic Variation in Levels of Agreement Between Parents and Adolescents

The object of this paper is to examine why agreement betweenparents and adolescents varies across topics in the way it doesand why discrepancies take the particular form they do. Datafrom a large-scale survey of adolescents matched with independentreports from their parents (N=3,988) have been used to showthat the level of dyadic agreement is influenced by the objectivityof the topic, its relation to social norms, and its salienceto the respondents. Agreement is high when the topic is objectiveand unambiguous, and when it does not activate problems of socialdesirability or personal threat. Topics which refer to recentevents produce slightly less agreement than less timebound topicswhen the topic is a potentially threatening one. The level ofagreement does not change if the referent is changed from theparent, to the student, or to those outside the dyad.     

Hidden and actual dropout from the education system among adolescents of Ethiopian origin in Israel

ABSTRACT

This paper examines aspects and predictors of actual and hidden dropout among immigrant students in general, and among Israeli students of Ethiopian origin, in particular. A hidden dropout is a student who is often absent from school or physically in class but is passive and does not actively take part in the learning process. The subject of this study derives from research evidence showing that the dropout rates of Israeli adolescents of Ethiopian origin are higher than those of their peers who are not of Ethiopian origin. We investigated differences between normative learners, hidden dropout youth and adolescents who are disengaged from the educational system. The predictors included perceived discrimination, social support and collective identities; 374 adolescents of Ethiopian origin completed self-report questionnaires. The major findings show that the hidden dropouts group was characterised by a pattern of high parental encouragement but a lack of support from teachers. Implications of the results, both for theory and for practice, are discussed, followed by suggestions for future research.     

Are We Educating Creative Professionals? The Results of Some Experiments on the Education of Social Work Students in Italy

Creativity is a competence crucial for the practice of social work. In particular, it is associated with a greater ability to solve complex problems and to learn, and it is considered to be an integral element of the professional identity of social workers. Nevertheless, in the past 20 years, neoliberal policies and bureaucratization have promoted models of education focused more on technical skills than on imaginative and ideational capacities. This article presents the results of two experiments conducted to determine the effects on creativity and imagination of the technical education of social workers. The results show that creativity is not a variable independent of the type of education delivered to students and that educational programmes which emphasise only the technical dimension of social work can have a direct influence on the creative abilities of students. It is therefore necessary to strike the right balance between education aimed at the acquisition of technical skills and education that promotes creativity.     

Psychological adaptation among second-generation Moroccan adolescents: associations with sense of community and country of residence

ABSTRACT

Increasing evidence suggests that immigrant youths’ social integration varies widely across national contexts, but the factors explaining this variation at the individual and societal levels are still under debate. Drawing upon developmental and community psychology approaches, the current study aimed to investigate psychological adaptation in terms of life satisfaction, self-esteem, and psychological problems among second-generation Moroccan adolescents and their national peers in the Netherlands and Italy. Furthermore, we examined the role of sense of community (SoC) in these youths’ outcomes. Participants were 90 Moroccan-origin and 208 national adolescents aged between 17 and 20 years, who completed a questionnaire survey. Results indicated that life satisfaction was overall higher in the Netherlands than in Italy. Moreover, Moroccan and Dutch youth reported similar levels of self-esteem and psychological problems, whereas Italian youths fared less well than their Moroccan peers. The positive association between SoC and life satisfaction was stronger for Moroccan adolescents in both countries; SoC was related to higher self-esteem and fewer psychological problems, but only in Italy. The findings suggest that characteristics of the host society are crucial for the psychological adjustment of second-generation Moroccan adolescents, and that programs targeting SoC may boost these youths’ positive adaptation and social integration.     

Evidence-based practice: from medicine to social work

The last 10 years have witnessed an increasing interest in evidence-based practice in the field of medicine. The product of a time characterised by the explosion of information technology, a heightened sense of risk, and the enshrining of the principles of economy, effectiveness, transparency and consumerism, evidence-based practice has rapidly expanded from medicine to other fields, including social work. The new paradigm has generated not only great enthusiasm in many areas of the social work profession but also an intense debate about the transferability of the principles of evidence-based practice from medicine to a discipline that operates amidst particularly complex and multifaceted societal factors. Similarly, the concept of evidence upon which social work practice should be based has been the object of considerable discussion, though initial emphasis on results from randomised controlled trials seems to be gradually shifting towards broader approaches to defining evidence. Although organisational constraints and job pressures are likely to favour the use, among practitioners, of ‘preappraised’ resources, this should not prevent social workers from acquiring the skills and knowledge necessary to make independent and critical appraisal of evidence.     

Random Acts of Delinquency: Trauma and Self-Destructiveness in Juvenile Offenders

This article provides an explanatory model of the way in which trauma leads to serious delinquency. Using perspectives from information processing, social learning, and self-regulation theories, we present evidence to suggest that adolescents whose lives were shaped by trauma perceive and encode social cues differently than non-traumatized individuals. A number of assessment tools and therapeutic interventions are recommended, followed by suggestions for advocating on the behalf of adolescents incarcerated in the juvenile justice system.     

Directive teaching and gut learning: The seminar technique and its use in video-based role-play learning

Abstract

Traditional models of teaching in higher education induce a sense of competition amongst, students, exposing their varying degrees of competence. This is particularly true in seminar teaching where students are expected to perform individually in front of their peers. Some show up better man others, and tiiose who do badly are not only penalized by their teachers and peers but also caught in a cycle of deteriorating performance.

Because social work training is concerned with teaching good practice to each and every student, some of whom are more naturally able man others, the traditional style of seminar can be counter-productive and so undermining for some that they become unable to learn. Moreover, some of those who present well in academic seminars may be the less competent in the field and vice versa; good performance in class and good practice do not necessarily go together. As a teaching method in social work training the seminar needs to be adapted and made a more sensitive instrument.

A related problem is that an academic style of teaching can render social work material lifeless; it is difficult to develop skills and different ways of intervening when the subject matter presented does not come across as real and alive.

While David Wallbridge was working on the Seminar Technique, Hazel Danbury was experimenting with the use of closed circuit television in student case discussions. She soon discovered the same problems occurring with CCTV as were found in the seminar. This paper outlines some ways of minimizing these problems: First, David Wallbridge's Seminar Technique is explained. This is followed by an account of how Hazel Danbury used it in conjunction with CCTV and then monitored the method over a ten-week term. Finally there is a brief account of the students own evaluation of the method.     

Adolescent emancipation from foster care

This demonstration project tested the degree to which a short-term, competence-oriented service delivery model prepared 31 older adolescents to move into responsible independent living upon termination of foster home placement. The adolescents achieved significant growth as measured by independent living, employment, and social network skills but not in level of psychosocial functioning.     

Hezbollah as a Group Phenomenon: Differential Association Theory

This article examines Hezbollah through the lens of differential association theory. The theory posits that violent behavior is cultivated in group interaction. One does not simply act alone but must learn from the tricks, successes, and failures of those who belong to one's group. In this analysis, the theory explains how Hezbollah has successfully managed to recruit new members and convince them to perpetrate terrorist attacks. The essence of any terrorist endeavor is communication among group members. As such, by interacting with one another, Hezbollah terrorists develop their combat skills and learn new tactics. Of particular importance in this analysis is the role of symbolism that forges a bond among group members. Whether it is through the Ashura procession (an annual Shi'ite commemorative ceremony), matams (religious sanctuaries that now serve as political and social gatherings), or calendar events such as World Jerusalem Day, potential Hezbollah members get to learn violent behavior by cultivating evil in groups.     

The Impact of Neighborhood Factors on Mental Health and Academic Outcomes for Adolescents Participating in the Prodigy Program

The Prodigy Cultural Arts program provides art classes embedded with three types of self-regulation skills (problem solving, social skills, and anger management) in an after school community setting to at-risk youths. Empirical evidence supports the effectiveness of self-regulation skills programs and the arts in programs for at-risk youths, yet the impact of the environment on the youth participants is often ignored. This study examines neighborhood structural characteristics along with previously identified individual, mental health variables in school outcomes for adolescents attending the Prodigy Program. Findings suggest that neighborhood structural characteristics have some influence in program outcomes. Limitations of the study and future research are discussed.     

Social policy planning in a federal structure: A social learning strategy

Current social welfare policy planning reflects an inadequate sense of the problems to be solved and an incentive structure which discourages responsible decision making. Proceeding from overly simple cause and effect models, social welfare policies are designed with detailed administrative regulations to insure uniformity and regularity of behavior across the states. When problems are not solved, policy makers focus on the failures of personnel to follow all the detailed regulations. This leads to additional efforts to enforce compliance. There is evidence that implementation personnel consistently and purposively do stretch or ignore regulations in order to service clients. An alternative to further detailed regulations then is to use the autonomy of state units in the federal structure by eliminating negative incentives to innovation and creating incentives to experiment with alternative programs. As a social learning strategy this would encourage innovation and make it possible to learn from the experience of personnel who daily confront the realities of welfare problems and the large array of administrative details.     

Vocal and Facial Emotion Decoding Difficulties Relating to Social and Thought Problems: Highlighting Schizotypal Personality Disorder

Successful social interaction depends on the ability to decode emotion in the nonverbal behaviors of others. Because relationship difficulties are paramount in adolescents with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD), we predicted that adolescents with SPD would (1) make more emotion decoding errors than adolescents with other personality disorders (OPD) or non-psychiatric controls (NPC); and (2) exhibit more social and thought problems than OPD or NPC adolescents. Further, we predicted greater emotion decoding errors for all adolescents would relate to concurrent and future social problems, thought problems, and social reasoning deficits. SPD adolescents made more errors than OPD and NPC adolescents in decoding voices but not faces (except in specific emotion categories). For all adolescents, vocal errors correlated with greater social problems, and facial and vocal errors correlated with greater thought difficulties concurrently and a year later.