Meeting the needs of the adoption triangle through Open Adoption: The adoptive parent

Open adoption enables the adoptive parents to participate more fully in the adoption. It allows them to make decisions regarding the amount of openness they wish to have. By means of seminars, readings, and panels the adoptive parents learn more about adoption and birthparents. By experiencing openness, the adoptive parents come to know the birthparents as real people. The birthparents are no longer perceived as a threat. The adoptive parents gain a feeling of entitlement to parent from the birthparent(s).     

“Will This Record Work for Us?”: Managing Music Formats in Commercial Radio

How do radio stations decide what music to play on the air? Previous studies offer a single answer to this question. In contrast, this study examines the variety of ways that radio programmers answer this question by conceptualizing them as mediators between record companies and radio audiences. From interviews with programmers at commercial radio stations in the United States we identify key programming practices that programmers use to manage their stations' music formats and present a typology of repertoires of such practices. We then discuss the implications of each programming repertoire for stations' music formats and the structural conditions that promote the use of each programming repertoire. In conclusion, we consider the study's implications for understanding culture production in the commercial radio industry.     

Implementing Single Session Therapy

In recent decades, discussion about clinical practice has been dominated by a focus on evidence‐based treatments, whilst the translation of evidence‐based treatments into practice has been neglected or avoided. The single session therapy (SST) field reflects this general trend. As a result, the community has not benefited from available service improvements simply because they have not found their way into core practice or been translated across state‐wide services. This article draws on a range of implementation projects managed by The Bouverie Centre, in particular a successful state‐wide SST implementation project conducted in collaboration with Victorian community health counselling services, to raise implementation dilemmas and suggest practical ideas about the translation of SST ideas into mainstream clinical practice. It is hoped this discussion will be of interest to those wanting to translate any new idea into practice.     

Tailored program evaluation: Past, present, future

This paper discusses measurement issues related to the evaluation of computer-tailored health behavior change programs. As the first generation of commercially available tailored products is utilized in health promotion programming, programmers and researchers are becoming aware of the unique challenges that the evaluation of these programs presents. A project is presented that used an online tailored health behavior assessment (HBA) in a worksite setting. Process and outcome evaluation methods are described and include the challenges faced, and strategies proposed and implemented, for meeting them. Implications for future research in tailored program development, implementation, and evaluation are also discussed.     

Service user or service provider? How social work and human services students integrate dual identities

Students studying undergraduate social work and human services (SWHS) degrees may have used health and human service agencies, before and during their university education. Using services provides them with insights that are useful for professional practice. However, this article identifies that they experience a fear of shame and stigma revealing this during their studies. In examining interview data from 15 undergraduate SWHS students they recounted how they integrated their experience of being a service user into their professional development. It is argued that insider knowledge of services can provide them with valuable insights for practice. Students spoke about how positive experiences motivated them to study and provided models of effective practice, exemplifying its potential power to assist those in need. Negative experiences of service use can also be beneficial for learning what ‘not to do’. Although students found the experience of service use invaluable, they felt it was never acknowledged within the curriculum. Consequently, students interviewed in this study identified service users as ‘others’. They feared disclosing their own use of services due to perceived shame and stigma. Failing to provide opportunity for students to integrate their service user experience into their professional development creates a false dichotomy which does not acknowledge the intersection of these dual identities.     

What Changes for Young Carers? A Qualitative Evaluation of the Impact of Dedicated Support Provision for Young Carers

In 2016, the Children’s Commissioner for England reported that the most frequent provision for young carers (YCs) comes from dedicated YC services. This study formed one part of a three-year evaluation of support for YCs and their families provided by the Hampshire YCs Alliance (HYCA), a county-wide collaboration of ten YC services in the UK. It set out to explore the following primary questions; (a) what are the most important changes that the YC services made to YCs and their families? (b) what is it about the services that creates those changes? Semi-structured interviews were carried out in 2017, with YCs aged 9–17 (n = 8), their parents (n = 5), HYCA staff (n = 6) and professionals from other stakeholder organisations (n = 5) and a thematic analysis was undertaken. Reflecting previous research that YCs and their families have a broad range of needs, findings also reveal how YC services support them through a diverse range of interventions. Support led to a diverse range of positive changes for YCs and their families. A number of service features that facilitate change for YCs, as well as ‘key dynamics’ important in facilitating change were identified. These findings have led to a conceptual framework of how YC services facilitate change for YCs and are important for understanding the impact these dedicated services can make to the lives of YCs and how they facilitate change. Together they have implications for the development and commissioning of interventions for YCs and families and how service providers promote their support provision.

     

Child Welfare Social Workers and Open Adoption Myths

Open adoption can have positive effects on the psychological well-being of adopted children. This study's purpose was to explore child welfare social workers' open adoption attitudes and their agreement with open adoption myths in predicting the relationship with their levels of openness toward open adoption. This study showed that open adoption attitudes, open adoption myths, and area of practice have an association with the levels of openness toward open adoption in a group of child welfare social workers. This information could be beneficial to policy makers and professionals who may be interested in increasing the facilitation of open adoption.     

Picking Up the Mantle of “Expert”: Assigned Roles,Assertion of Identity,and Peer Recognition Within a Programming Class

Changing an established role in a classroom is difficult. It involves constructing a new set of relations within a community. In this article we investigate how students with newly developed interest and experience in programming developed outside the classroom pick up and establish their roles as experts in programming within the classroom community. More specifically, we focus on how two 11-year-old software designers shifted their established roles in their classroom to gain status as expert programmers. We use an identity lens to understand how peer expertise was established in the context of a classroom community, adopting a multifaceted perspective of identity by focusing on an individual's narrativization of self, full, or peripheral participation among a group of people, and individuals' social recognition by others. Our findings point to the importance of both positive positioning by authority figures in the classroom and activities and roles that provide opportunities to establish intersubjectivity among peers in facilitating students' identities as experts in the classroom. Students' willingness to take up a new position in the established activity system also played a role. We consider implications of how making roles flexible within classroom stratification may provide opportunities for more students see themselves as experts.     

Gestaltung internetbasierter kollaborativer Team- und Projektarbeit

In order to support team and project work in companies, Internet-based collaboration software tools are increasingly being used. These software tools enable employees located within and outside the organization to communicate, share knowledge and data, and organize projects. Whether these benefits can be actualized depends on how the collaboration software is designed. As an orientation for the effective use of collaboration software tools, the present paper presents a design model for spatially distributed collaborative work and demonstrates its suitability based on a practical example. Therefore, we exemplarily show design activities and problems of the practical example and locate them within the model. Despite an extensive technical acumen and diverse design work, we identify problems with the use of collaboration tools. They focus on five problem areas: (1) parallel use of collaboration software tools, (2) transparency in terms of change, (3) the high rate of virtual meetings, (4) the onboarding process, and (5) the dilemma between the daily business and the implementation of internal IT projects.     

Developing an educational workshop on teen depression and suicide: a proactive community intervention

Eight years into the YES emergency services collaboration, a comprehensive Youth Emergency Services model has emerged, one that incorporates a proactive approach to clinical and prevention strategies. In addition to direct service provision, these strategies include: (1) workshop training of school and community professionals so that they can identify young persons at highest risk for suicidal thoughts, threats, and attempts; (2) prevention education for both adolescents and parents about suicide, risk factors, and interventions; (3) a partnership with the local hotline to facilitate community screening and referral to appropriate crisis services for families and youths; (4) collaboration with a large primary care provider network to streamline the after-hours crisis referral process, using the hotline; and (5) the use of a website to inform individuals about services and resources. It is proposed that this is a contemporary model that can meet the present primary and secondary intervention needs for children, adolescents, and their families.     

‘An Ordinary Sexual Life?’:A Review of the Normalisation Principle as It Applies to the Sexual Options of People with Learning Disabilities

This paper explains why the normalisation principle has had so little effect on the sexual options open to people with learning disabilities. It analyses discourses about services and about sexuality and suggests that one implicit role of services is the regulation of sexuality and the creation of sexual boundaries. The paper questions whether there are homogenous sexual values, and challenges the assumption that sexuality is 'natural' arguing that this view is simplistic and hides the extent to which rules about sexual behaviour are applied on the basis of social inequalities. Thus, the paper explores assumptions and ideologies about sexuality, normality and integration and reinstates all three concepts to a problematical status. It questions the ways in which people with learning disabilities are really free to be 'sexual' and the penalties they face in breaking out of the roles which have been prescribed for them.     

Danish and Norwegian hospital social workers’ cross-institutional work amidst inter-sectoral restructuring of health and social welfare

Starting in the 2000s, Denmark and Norway have undergone extensive restructuring of their health-related social benefit programmes, including how they are governed. Several reforms have sought to enhance inter-sectoral collaboration. Aiming at ensuring patients’ faster return to work, policy-makers have instituted economic incentives to both individuals and the health and welfare organisations who handle them. Through an institutional logics approach, this paper explores how hospital social workers in these countries are experiencing these changes. The ‘social’ part of post-treatment care and rehabilitation receives more attention in the Norwegian institutional set-up than in the Danish, and whilst challenges are experienced in both countries, in group interviews Danish social workers in particular express concerns about the implications of the accelerated return-to-work focus. In both countries, they report increasing difficulties in ‘making their way through’ the state-municipal bureaucracy. However, by drawing on the formal health knowledge derived from medical settings and the symbolic capital it bestows on them, they often manage to negotiate the work-and-welfare services, thereby transforming the social context for the patients.     

Rehabilitation Contexts: A Holistic Approach

Psychosocial rehabilitation involves a gamut of activities that need to be personalized to suit an individual's needs. The context in which rehabilitation occurs greatly influences the range and availability of rehabilitation services and their utilization. This study attempts to highlight the contextual factors, with specific reference to globalization and development, the scope of rehabilitation, and the continuum of rehabilitation services that have a bearing on an individual's recovery. The relevance and effectiveness of the bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach in making services more pertinent and applicable are discussed. Implications for program development and policy interventions are suggested. It is hoped that this study will draw attention to the need for openness to a broad range of services even while using specific interventions.     

Beyond polyphony: Open Dialogue in a Women’s Shelter in Australia as a possibility for supporting violence‐informed practice

Open Dialogue is a family/social network‐centered psychotherapeutic approach to responding to people in crisis and distress. In 2017, Open Dialogue network meetings were implemented in an Australian inner‐city shelter for disadvantaged women. The aim of this study was to explore the experience of participating in these meetings from the perspective of service users and Open Dialogue practitioners. Qualitative interviews were completed with thirteen participants (six service users and seven practitioners) and analyzed thematically. The findings suggested that dialogical processes created safety by attending to multiple voices in nonviolent ways that reduced perceived hierarchies. Notions of expertise were renegotiated, which allowed the women to feel heard in significant ways that were different from their previous experiences with other social and healthcare services. Open Dialogue is an approach that can meaningfully attend to some of the power relations within which women live and within which social and health care services are provided.     

Use of evidence-based interventions in child welfare: Do attitudes matter?

Implementation of evidence-based programs in child welfare has progressed slowly, with the majority of services in child welfare settings lacking empirical evidence for effectiveness. In other settings, research has identified providers' attitudes about evidence-based practices (EBPs) as a potential barrier to adoption of EBPs. As little research has focused on the role of attitudes in influencing use after training in an EBP in child welfare, the potential for attitudes to impede implementation efforts in child welfare is unclear. This study addressed this question in a sample of 55 caseworkers and therapists randomly assigned to enhanced support to use an EBP following training or a training-only condition. Information on providers' use of the intervention after training and their attitudes about EBPs were measured for up to five time points. Results indicate that attitudes did not predict providers' use of the EBP, and attitudes did not change overall or in the enhanced condition that provided greater exposure to the intervention. Providers perceived of requirements to use a practice as more influential in their use than their openness to EBPs. However, those who were more open to EBPs were more likely to participate in implementation support after the training, suggesting that openness facilitates participation in activities that support use of a new intervention.     

The institutionalization of Open Source

Using concepts of neoinstitutional economics, such as transaction cost economics, institutional economics, property rights theory, and information economics, the development of the Open Source movement is investigated. Following the evolution of institutions in Open Source, it is discussed what the comparative institutional advantages of this model are. The conclusion is that it is the institutional framework of Open Source, not merely the low cost of Open Source software that makes it an attractive alternative mode of organizing the production and distribution of software and software-related services. Alternative organizations will be formed and existing organizations will be transformed to take advantage of its opportunities.     

Bureaucrats and expertise: Elucidating a problematic relationship in three tableaux and six jurisdictions

It is frequently assumed that the expertise of bureaucrats gives them policy-making power. This paper examines critically this proposition on the basis of a study of 52 regulations passed in six jurisdictions. The paper presents the material from this study in the form of three tableaux: the bureaucrat as expert, the bureaucrat as mobiliser of expertise and the bureaucrat as servant of experts. Expertise is primarily understood as either scientific expertise or policy expertise -knowledge or experience of a specific policy area. In each tableau the significance of expertise as a source of influence can be questioned. Where “experts” have influence, it is because of their status rather than the content of their expertise. Max Weber himself was ambivalent about the importance of expertise and its role in strengthening bureaucratic power in policy-making is likely to have been exaggerated.