You Can't Get There From Here: Reaching the Outdoors in Senior Housing

By providing access to outdoor environments, exterior doors can enhance the sense of freedom in residential environments for aging. However, doorways may also present barriers to outdoor access. Using environmental audits, this study examined doorway problems at 68 assisted living facilities in three geographic regions. Results were compared with resident surveys (n = 1,128), staff surveys (n = 432), and resident focus groups (n = 76). Specific doorway issues were found to be associated with residents’ weekly minutes of walking, outdoor usage, and perceived ease of reaching outdoor areas. The main problems were door opening/closing, thresholds and landings, and self-locking doors. The findings indicate that exterior doorways often present barriers to assisted living residents, resulting in lower levels of walking and outdoor use. By discouraging these health-related behaviors, doorway problems may negatively affect residents’ health and well-being. Practice implications suggest that many existing doorway problems, such as high thresholds or excessive opening force, are easily remedied.     

Advanced Placement in MSW Programs

A course designed to enhance Human Behavior and Social Environment content dealing with urban family life is described. The focus is on how simultaneous use of sociological and literary material highlights the relationship between the intimacies of family life and institutional forces. This approach, coupled with team teaching by minority and white faculty, reduces tension generated by examination of material that is close to student experience. Anger and myth are minimized, thus freeing students for serious study of the urban family.     

Evaluation of Student Learning Outcomes in MSW Programs

Abstract

The Nation is experiencing a rural crisis of severe proportions. Initially, that crisis was tied to depressed commodity prices and the demise of family farms but current developments indicate that it is of greater scope. Farm closures have caused the exodus of citizens, businesses, banks and services from small towns, particularly in the Heartland and the agricultural South. Despair among farmers has resulted in suicide and homicide; a traditional way of life is under threat of extinction. Additionally, depressed oil and other mineral prices have changed the rhythm of many rural lives and caused displacement of workers in non-agricultural yet rural states. This paper reports the results of a national survey of social work schools and programs and assesses the response of social work education to this crisis. Programmatic innovations are inventoried; regional comparisons are offered on practitioner and program responses; factors that facilitated or hindered those responses are reviewed; and the purported anti-rural bias of social work is assessed.     

Suicide in Adolescent American Indians: Preventative Social Work Programs

Suicide is a leading social problem among the adolescent American Indian community. This literature review examines the demographics of American Indian adolescents who attempt suicide, along with the effects it has on the entire family/community. This paper describes various programs used to address individuals, while correlating them to specific use within the American Indian population. The authors look at the effectiveness of the Adolescent Suicide Prevention Project, American Indian Life Skills Development Curriculum, and Zuni Life Skills Development, along with the draw-backs associated with the implementation of each program. The importance of incorporating culturally specific programs and addressing the issue at a community level in an attempt to enhance the well-being of at-risk American Indian Adolescents is emphasized.     

MSW Students' Perspectives on Social Work Goals and Social Activism Before and After Completing Graduate Education

This article analyzes perspectives on the goals of the social work profession and social activism of a cohort of MSW students before and after attending their graduate program. This study provides insights into the question about whether and how preexisting values, experiences, and background characteristics affect beginning and ending students' views of the goals of social work and also whether they anticipate being socially active in the future, utilizing a range of strategies to effect change. It found that students from all methods began with a dual (micro and macro) view of social work goals and much activism and then left the MSW program with the same confirmed person-in-environment perspective and a commitment to all types of social activism in even greater numbers.     

Evaluating ITV-Based MSW Programs: A Comparison of ITV and Traditional Graduates' Perceptions of MSW Program Qualities

SUMMARY

Traditional and ITV-based MSW graduates at the University of Minnesota are compared on their perceptions of learning, relationships with instructors, adequacy of access to resources, connections with others students, staff support, connection to the school. Possible impacts of ITV exposure on graduates' use of electronic technologies are also examined. ITV graduates generally rated the program's impacts on learning and their satisfaction with various program supports equal to or higher than did graduates of the traditional program, with the exception of students' connections to other students and access to resources such as libraries and computer labs.     

When You Can't Afford to Leave Home: Clinical Implications of Economic Realities

Young adults entering the job market are finding that, despite strong corporate profits, economic growth is not trickling down to worker earnings, and federal policies are moving from the notion of entitlement to one of blame (Uchitelle, 1996, Sec. 4, p. 1). Adolescence is becoming increasingly confusing, since for many Americans economic opportunity is more fantasy than reality. This article highlights the declining opportunity for young adults and points out the limitations of existing adult developmental theory, both of which call for altered treatment conceptualizations that include the clinician operating as an anthropologist and utilizing the concepts of relationship-differentiation and response/ability from Stone Center writings.     

Teaching Trauma Theory and Practice in MSW Programs: A Clinically Focused,Case-Based Method

Social workers provide much of the mental health treatment in the United States, and, given the ubiquity of trauma, most clinical social workers will provide treatment to trauma survivors during their careers. Therefore, trauma theory and practice must be included in MSW curricula and taught as a clinical course. This paper suggests that experienced clinician instructors teach trauma theory and practice classes using a case-based method. Bringing case material into the classroom helps prepare students for the complexities and challenges of treating survivors of trauma. To demonstrate how cases can help students connect theory to practice, the paper presents the treatment of a Central African asylum seeker recovering from trauma. The case emphasizes the centrality of the therapeutic relationship and illustrates the use of several evidence-supported trauma interventions along with core principles of social work practice. Finally, the paper suggests that social work educators consider developing a structured method of integrating cases into the trauma curriculum.     

Sources of Variation in Rate of Decline of Applications to MSW Programs

This study identifies factors associated with the extent of decline in applications to MSW programs between 1975 and 1981. Data were gathered in a secondary analysis of three sources of data on all MSW programs accredited by the Council on Social Work Education as of 1975 and in a qualitative follow-up study of eight of these programs. The variables found to be most strongly related to declines in applications as well as the direction of these relationships were unexpected, casting doubt on prevailing assumptions about the causes of the decline and how schools can counteract it.     

Trends in Student-Faculty Ratios and the Use of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty in MSW Programs

This article reports on a study of enrollment trends, staffing patterns, and student-faculty ratios in master’s degree programs in social work and three related fields. Results for MSW programs show (a) that the median ratio of students to faculty in MSW programs has grown 36% since 1981 and, for the past five years, has exceeded the Council on Social Work Education’s recommended maximum; (b) that since 1978, the number of full-time tenure-track faculty has declined by nearly 8% despite sharply increased student populations; and (c) that the number of part-time faculty has increased, but not in proportion to the number of students. None of the related fields examined in this study showed a similar combination of enrollment growth and full-time faculty decline.     

Chapter 5: Perspectives on the Integration of Employee Assistance and Work-Life Programs

SUMMARY

A recent qualitative study explored perceptions of critical issues and challenges from the point of view of experts and key informants working in diverse roles in the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) field (Sharar & Hertenstein, 2005). One of the central themes that came out of the study is that EAPs have become a type of platform for the expansion of integrated collateral services, chiefly work-life (WL) programs. This paper presents a variety of perceptions and opinions from experts in the EAP field, both pro and con, on the growing convergence of EA and WL programs, including the rationale to integrate, segregate, and concerns regarding the diffusion of traditional and core EAPs. The paper concludes with the authors? perspectives on implications for the EA field, along with the need to find ways to measure if and when integration leads to employee and organizational improvement.     

From Contract to Status: Perspectives on Employment Seniority*

Length of service as a criterion governing personnel decisions is a widely applied normative principle. Contractual agreements that provide that employees' status with respect to promotion and layoff be based on seniority serve to limit discrimination and favoritism, remove an element of competition among workers, and provide a form of social insurance against the contingencies of aging. This status variable is sometimes erroneously perceived as “job ownership.” Decline of labor turnover, the aging of the labor force, and growth of pension programs reinforce concern about seniority. Expectations based on seniority have been challenged under the Civil Rights Act by former discriminatees who question the fairness of the rank ordering. In times of declining opportunity seniority as an allocative device assumes greater importance, while in a utopia, where all jobs are equally satisfying and there is full employment, seniority would be irrelevant.     

推动教育公平的教育政策国际视野

随着世界政治经济文化的发展及价值观的演变,对教育公平的理论界定和政策实践也一直在不断发展。国外教育公平研究的新进展体现在以下三个方面:以个人权利和福利为中心的教育公平,强调制度公正的教育公平,从重能力向重选择转变的教育公平。     

The Alliance in Relationship Education Programs

Couple relationship education (CRE) programs are associated with positive romantic relationship outcomes; however, the mechanisms by which these gains occur are less understood. The current study (122 couples) utilized actor–partner modeling to examine the association between the therapeutic alliance and dedication and negative and positive communication for racial/ethnic minority couples. Additionally, we examined whether gender and delivery format moderated these relationships. Results demonstrated that both men's and women's alliance scores were significantly related to their own outcomes. Higher ratings of alliance were related to partner outcomes for men only. The association between partners' alliance and dedication outcomes was stronger within the group format as compared to the couple format. Implications for leaders of CRE programs are offered.     

Perceptions of Self-Care Among MSW Students: Implications for Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

For students new to social work, self-care is a strategy for addressing potentially negative impacts of the profession. Curiously, however, participation in a university’s self-care program has been chronically low. The purpose of this study is to explore social work students’ perceptions of self-care and to create a database for supporting changes in social work education. Qualitative data were collected via an online survey from MSW students. The findings revealed 5 categories for student perceptions of self-care, including health, time, activities, balance, and professionalism, and 3 categories for self-care and the social work program, including academic program experiences, resources, and modeling. Implications of the study in developing and tailoring a self-care program to students in MSW programs are discussed.