Residential care and education

SUMMARY. Children in care have a poor record of achievement in school. Those in residential care face particular difficulties, arising from changes of placement, inadequate liaison between children's homes and schools, low expectations among care and school staff, and an environment in which educational needs are not given priority. The experience of one voluntary children's home suggests some ways in which these disadvantages may be overcome.     

THE ATTITUDINAL CLIMATE FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIVITY

Successful entrepreneurial activity is a major source of jobcreation and a vital part of a healthy market economy. Thisarticle examines the attitudes that, taken collectively withina region, may contribute to a climate that is conducive to andsupportive of this activity. Four different components thatcharacterize these attitudes are identified—the willingnessto take risks and accept the possibility of failure, the perceiveddifficulty of starting new firms, the importance and respectaccorded to new and small firms and their owners, and the socializationchildren are likely to receive from their parents. These attitudinalcomponents are related to measures of the structure and performanceof the respondent's local economy and to individual factors.The most important finding is that pro-entrepreneurial attitudesare lower among individuals working in large organizations andamong those who live in areas dominated by large organizationsregardless of the size of their own employer. Other measuresof the local economy, such as past success in creating new businesses,were not associated with differences in attitudes. Attitudesalso are related to individual attributes such as age and income.     

VELOCITY FUTURES MARKETS: DOES THE FED NEED A STRUCTURAL MODEL?

Previous proposals suggesting monetary policy makers target private-sector forecasts have been shown to be problematic. As policy becomes more effective, private-sector forecasts become less informative. Under perfect stabilization private-sector forecasts provide no useful guidance to monetary policy makers about economic shocks. We illustrate a way around this circularity problem by creating a policy futures market linked to the ratio of the (realization of the) policy goal for next period and the current instrument setting. The implication is that extensive information gathering is unnecessary, weakening the argument that central banks need a structural model to conduct policy. (JEL E52, E44, E42 )     

Research Note: Developing Outcome Measures in Child Care

Correpondence to Dr Harriet Ward. Research Associate, University of Bristol, Social Policy and Social Planning. The Alfred Marshall Building, 40 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1HY. Summary The complexity of the concept of outcome has discouraged researchinto the impact of the care experience on the child. This Notesummarizes the conceptual thinking behind a comprehensive systemof assessment which is being piloted in four local authorities,and reports on the preliminary results.     

Development of an Instrument for the Analysis of Problem Gambling Counselling Practice

This article provides an overview of the development and validation of a Counsellor Task Analysis (Problem Gambling) [CTA (PG)] instrument undertaken in order to document the activities of counsellors in problem gambling services. The CTA (PG) aims to provide a broad overview of the complexity of the counsellor's role; specify the range of tasks they perform; and document the relationship between the frequency of task performance and the counsellor's beliefs about the importance of the tasks performed. The CTA (PG) instrument addresses nine dimensions of practice activity through nine subscales, all of which demonstrate internal consistency. It appears to be a strong instrument in terms of its measurement error characteristics for recommending its use with counsellors engaged in the field of gambling. The CTA (PG) gives counsellors the opportunity to document their practice and theories in use when dealing with a problem gambler, a member of the problem gambler's family and the community at large. The psychometric findings reported in this article should be viewed as the preliminary results of an ongoing research effort and further psychometric testing is anticipated.     

Examining Factors Associated With Program Completion Among Women Participants in a Statewide Drug Court Program

The study purpose was to examine factors affecting women in completing drug court. Participants were 212 women drug court participants selected via stratified random sampling (by county) from the larger Kentucky Drug Court participant population. Various secondary data sources were used (e.g., participant assessment, Management Information System), and multivariate logistic regression examining 17 independent variables showed 4 variables were significantly associated with program completion for women: employment at program assessment, intravenous opiate use, number of times hospitalized for psychological or emotional problems, and conviction of a misdemeanor-eligible violent crime before drug court. Study findings can be used by social workers and other practitioners to better understand women’s drug court participation and to identify ways to tailor program services for women’s unique needs.     

Family Group Conferences: User Empowerment or Family Self-Reliance?--a development from Lupton

Correspondence to Shirley Jackson, Department of Social Work Studies, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK. Summary This article isa response to Lupton (1998). It is not in thetradition of a critical response, but rather a complementaryand extended exploration of the issues raised in the earlierpaper. It draws on the authors' respective experiences as innovatorand researcher in the field of child welfare and youth justiceand presents, within the overall debate, new material both fromchild welfare initiatives and from the recently completed studyinto the use of family group conferences in youth justice. Itconcludes that some of the key tenets of family group conferencesare in danger of being neglected by professional and politicalagendas if urgent attention is not given to the primary purposeof family empowerment and to adequate resourcing of FGC plans.