Fiscal management in government-funded nonprofit organizations: An exploratory study

Nonprofit human services organizations are playing an increasingly important role in the implementation of government programs. Yet little is known about how the fiscal affairs of these organizations are managed. This article explores the fiscal and budget practices of a group of affiliated nonprofit human services organizations in the western United States in an effort to provide a preliminary assessment of the capacities of these organizations, which have become so critical to the execution of public policy. The findings demonstrate that the organizations surveyed are making widespread use of many sophisticated management tools and methods in their budget processes.     

Assessing Monetary and Fiscal Policy Interaction in a Small Open Economy: the Case Republic of Macedonia

The aim of this paper is to analyze empirically the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy in a small open transition economies: the case the Republic of Macedonia. This paper employs SVAR methodology to examine jointly the impact monetary and fiscal policy on real GDP and prices. The result reveals that the monetary policy counteracts the effects of fiscal policy and persists until the effects of fiscal policy changes disappear. This causes a crowding out effect. In addition, the result shows that the best fiscal policy for stimulating the economy appears to be one of tax-cuts. The empirical research, in jointly analyzing fiscal and monetary policy also provides an additional, possibly interesting result. The sizes of the responses of real GDP and prices to monetary shock are not significantly reduced when fiscal shock is included into monetary SVAR.     

Resilience as Effective Functional Capacity: An Ecological-Stress Model

This article presents the premise that resilience rests on an ecological-systems conceptual base that explains how people adapt to stress and maintain their daily functioning. The resilience ecological-stress model presented here uses the ecological-systems perspective, commonly known as the person-environment approach, as a unifying, overarching framework to describe an integrated approach for social work research, education, and practice. It evolved over two decades as theory related to ecological systems theory and risk and resilience approaches were synthesized into a coherent whole.     

Typologies of Child Protection Systems: An International Approach

In recent decades, typologies have been developed to better understand the way in which different countries create systems to protect the interests of vulnerable children and their families. A child protection system typology is a classification of a set of characteristics that capture and define different approaches to child protection. Typologies are helpful in enabling comparisons of systems across international contexts, helping also to illuminate the various strengths and weaknesses of child protection systems. Typologies can also guide or redirect the development of a system, as they illustrate the varied ways in which children might be better protected. They explain how a cultural value base underpins approaches to child protection and can suggest alternative ways in which a system might evolve, based on the experiences of other countries. This article builds upon early typology building work and presents an international child protection system typology that has universal application. Country examples are used to illustrate the development of systems across two dimensions: whether they are oriented towards an individual or community focus; and whether systems are more, or less, regulated.     

The Munro Review of Child Protection: An Appraisal

Over the last 40 years child protection systems in all Advanced Western Societies have been subject to high profile criticisms and regular major reviews. In many respects the Munro Review of Child Protection (2011) in England, is very different to those which have gone before. This paper summarises the main findings and recommendations of The Review and locates it in its immediate policy and practice contexts. The paper also begins to identify some of its possible gaps and challenges and argues that the success of The Review is likely to depend on cultural, political and economic factors well beyond its influence and outlines what these are.     

Fiscal Pressure of Migration and Horizontal Fiscal Inequality: Evidence from Indian Experience

This article examines the patterns and trends in inter‐State migration across the Indian States and observes that along with the demographic factors, migration is also affected by the fiscal profile of States. Controlling for the economic prosperity of States as reflected in their per capita Net State Domestic Product and the nature of fiscal policy stance, econometric estimation using the gravity model suggests that level of vertical federal transfers and its horizontal distribution is an important determinant of the pattern of inter State migration. To correct for the extant horizontal fiscal inequality across the Indian States, the article suggests a relatively more progressive transfer system and a developmental fiscal policy stance at the State level to reduce the pressure of out‐migration to prosperous regions of the country.     

Assessing companies' decent work practices: An analysis of ESG rating methodologies

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) rating agencies, as non-financial data providers, have become central actors in the field of responsible investment. Although research has explored the construction of ESG metrics, little is known about how agencies evaluate decent work. Building on the analysis of six rating agencies, this article investigates how these actors measure and assess companies' performance in terms of decent work and related areas and identifies the challenges they face in this endeavour. The authors seek to better understand the capacity of responsible investment and ESG ratings to promote and improve decent work within companies.     

Preparation for Contact: An Aid to Effective Social Work Intervention

This article proposes that a pre‐contact phase of work which helps prepare the worker/social work student for face‐to‐face intervention is a prerequisite for effective practice. It builds on the original work by Douglas and McColgan in which preparation for contact was placed in the context of the Diploma in Social Work Competence requirements. In this revised article links are made to the new degree in social work while retaining the framework which provides for examination of essential knowledge, skills and values which underpin effective preparation for a social work encounter. The article discusses the Preparation for Contact exercise and explores its value as a learning tool for social work students, its usefulness as an assessment tool for university tutors and agency practice teachers in relation to testing the student's ‘readiness’ for contact and its place in providing practice learning evidence in relation to requirements of the degree in social work.     

Assessing Risk: A Public Analysis of the Medfly Eradication Program

The Mediterranean Fruit Fly eradication program provided anopportunity to assess public attitudes toward technologicalrisks. This is a case study of 126 residents from a metropolitanarea who, during the 1981–82 Mediterranean Fruitfly Crisis,were undergoing exposure to aerial spraying with a pesticide.While only one-third of the subjects expressed fear of dangerto their health and to the environment, 94 percent undertookone or more major behavioral precautions. Individual differencesin risk perception were related to perceived benefits of theprogram, political ideology, faith in experts, and media exposure.Individual differences in risk acceptability varied primarilyas a function of risk perception. Federal, state, and businessagencies were perceived as influential in decision making, withindividual citizens having little opportunity for input.     

Institutional Determinants of Collaboration: An Empirical Study of County Open-Space Protection

Collaboration is an increasingly important topic in the publicadministration and management literatures. A preponderance ofstudies focuses on how managers can build trust between thegovernment and collaborative partners by means of behavioralattributes and managerial skill. In this article, the authorsuggests that stable institutions and local government structurefacilitate collaboration by allowing public managers to morecredibly commit in a policy arena. Using county data on open-spacepolicy, the author finds empirical support for the propositionthat county form of government, along with rules governing debtaccumulation and administrative commitment, increases the breadthof county collaboration in open-space protection.     

Wraparound Services: An Effective Intervention for Families Impacted by Severe Mental Illness

ABSTRACT

Children and families impacted by severe mental illness (SMI) have multiple strains that effect family functioning, child safety, and parental rights. Traditional services for children and families struggling with severe mental illness have not achieved success in improving family functioning and keeping families intact. Wraparound is a philosophy and a system of care with a promising evidence base that could enhance collaboration of child welfare, mental health, and community services to work more effectively with families impacted by SMI.     

Assessing Listening in Elementary and Junior High Schools: An Examination of Four Listening Tests

The major object of the Calgary Listening Inquiry Project (CLIP) was the undertaking of school-based studies derived from teacher-defined problems and concerns with listening instruction. Another objective was development, implementation, and assessment of effective strategies and materials for teaching and evaluating listening. Four tests—Listening Comprehension Tests (LCT), Alberta Listening Tests (ALT), Test of Adolescent Language (TOAL), and Thinking Creatively with Sounds and Words (TCSW)—were administered. Discussion concerns the nature of these tests and how the use and study of them helped teachers not only to acquire data about students' listening skills but also to develop a vocabulary about listening and to define their questions. Teachers developed a Listening Profile for use as a student checklist for listening skill development and two Listening Awareness Assessment Questionnaires to obtain student feedback and to involve students as participants in CLIP.     

The Impact of Parental Incarceration on Children: An Emerging Need for Effective Interventions

The increasing number of children with incarcerated parents constitutes perhaps one of the largest at-risk populations in the United States. Short- and long-term effects of parental incarceration are difficult to quantify; however, the current literature indicates that this population is negatively responding to major shifts in family structure, and is vulnerable to economic stress and adverse interpersonal issues. Service providers are seeking appropriate intervention strategies to address the resultant issues of parental incarceration. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of research on effective practice methods. This paper reviews the literature on the potential implications parental incarceration has on children, and discusses service providers’ concerted efforts to allay the consequences. Recommendations for appropriate data collection and identification of relevant gender, developmental, and cultural interventions are provided.     

发展性:奖励与惩罚在德育中的运用

奖励与惩罚是最为常用的对儿童行为进行反馈的方法,但这两种看似简单的方法却隐含着复杂的发展性功能,如若运用不当,不仅不能促进反而会阻碍儿童道德自我的建构.具有发展性功能的奖励不仅仅是对外在行为的强化,更应有利于儿童内在道德动机的激发;具有发展性功能的惩罚不是简单地指出错误,还要帮助儿童选择合适的行为方式.     

The Effects of Material Incentives in Mail Surveys: Two Studies

Two studies were undertaken on the effects of including a materialnonmonetary incentive in mail surveys, using various samplesof the general public in the Netherlands. The results show thatnonmonetary incentives produce a higher initial response rate,but follow-ups reduced the effect of the incentive to a nonsignificantratio. Inclusion of the incentive produced no response biasand little volunteer bias. Results from these studies offera possible explanation for why past studies on nonmonetary incentiveshave often shown positive effects: they were conducted usingmethods that produced low response rates. When methods thatproduce high response rates are used, the effect of nonmonetaryincentives on response rate disappears. Finally, the use ofmonetary incentives in mail surveys with a high base responseis discussed.     

Household Size as a Correlate of Divorce Rate: A County-Level Analysis

Divorce remains one of the main challenges facing American families today. Previous studies have shown that the risk of divorce is influenced by many factors, including spouses' characteristics and the types of neighborhoods in which they live. This study extends previous work by examining the association between household size and divorce rate at the county level using 1990 and 2000 county-level data. The results show that household size is negatively and significantly associated with divorce rate in both 1990 and 2000, regardless of the region of residence. That effect was stronger in 2000, where household size appeared as the second most significant correlate of divorce rate among all other variables considered in the linear multiple regression analysis. Such findings suggest that household size acts as a social capital variable which helps to maintain family structure, thus reducing the risk of union dissolution.     

In Praise of Feedback: An Effective Intervention for College Students Who Are Heavy Drinkers

Abstract

The efficacy of brief motivational feedback to reduce drinking among college students has been reported by several researchers. As an extension of this theoretical and applied framework, the author tested the use of mailed feedback to influence the drinking behavior of students self-identified as moderate-to-heavy drinkers in two randomized trials. A 6-week follow-up of the efforts suggested the efficacy of the feedback intervention at reducing alcohol consumption. The feedback mechanism used in the studies is described in detail and possible reasons for its efficacy are explored. In light of the cost-effective nature of this intervention, it may warrant a place in larger campus prevention programs.