Relationship among grip strength,functional outcomes,and work performance following hand trauma

This study examined the relationship among the recovery grip strength, functional outcomes, and work performance following occupational therapy intervention for hand trauma. This study had a sample size of 15 participants whose recovery grip strength was measured using a Jamar dynamometer, whose satisfaction with outcomes was measured by the Michigan Hand Outcomes Questionnaire (MHQ), and whose compliance with the home therapy program was measured by a visual analog scale (VAS). A Pearson r correlation demonstrated a significant relationship between recovery grip strength and two MHQ subset scores: overall hand function (r = 0.59, p = 0.019) and activities of daily living (ADL) performance (r = 0.61, p = 0.016). The participants' self-rating of compliance did not predict or influence either recovery grip strength or MHQ scores. A moderate positive correlation approaching significance (r = 0.51, p = 0.052) was found between grip strength and overall MHQ scores. The researchers concluded that a recovery grip strength measure should be used along with functional measures to appropriately assess overall hand function following hand trauma.     

Gatekeeping Policies: Terminating Students for Nonacademic Reasons

Abstract

This article reports findings from a national survey of MSW programs on the situations or behaviors that led them to develop or consider developing policies for nonacademic-based student terminations. The authors describe the most common behaviors reported, analyze the policy and procedure documents submitted by the MSW programs, and make recommendations based on their analyses.     

The Abused and Neglected Foster Child: Determinants of Emotional Conflict and Oppositional Behavior

Behavioral and emotional problems have been observed in emotionally vulnerable children in foster care under certain circumstances. A common pattern involves the unpredictable appearance of a previously absent or unavailable natural parent. Such an occurrence precipitates the reawakening of the child’s ambivalent feelings toward both natural and foster parents as well as their fears of abandonment. This frequently leads to behavior that is oppositional and difficult to manage. If the foster parents find the child’s behavior unmanageable, and if they are not provided with appropriate professional support during this difficult period, a crisis often follows that precipitates the child’s removal from the foster home. Individual, familial, and systemic contributions to this dilemma are discussed" This article emphasizes the origins and nature of the intrapsychic dilemma faced by these children. Particular emphasis is placed on the manifestations of a conflict of loyalty, in the child, and its relationship to the oppositional behavior of these children in foster care. Additional considerations include the impact of inconsistent parenting, abuse and neglect by the natural parents, the assumption of a parental role by the child and a concomitant renunciation of the child’s dependency needs, as well as an examination of the role of the foster parent’s fantasy of what it will be like to parent a traumatized child.     

Theoretical Perspectives of Male Sexual Abuse: Conceptualization of a Case Study

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the traumatic impact that sexual abuse can have on a young male's development by addressing mediating dispositions that can render a child vulnerable to the effects of sexual abuse. Consideration is given to three different theoretical perspectives that are not exclusive to male victims but shed light on the impact that sexual abuse can have on the development of a young boy. These perspectives include early family relationships and attachment theory, developmental psychopathology, and trauma theory. These theoretical lenses provide a conceptual understanding into why some victims are vulnerable to the effects of sexual abuse. Each theoretical view is applied to a case study of an adolescent male with a history of early trauma and sexual abuse. Clinical implications are discussed.     

A Case for Improving Social and Supportive Service Delivery for Ex-Offenders with Community Information Systems (CINS)

Research has shown that information technology, such as reentry mapping, community information systems (CINS) and other geographic information system (GIS)–related applications have improved criminal justice and social welfare outcomes. These Web-based applications are essential in that they serve as portals for extensive data allocation, collection, storage, and information sharing. One such Web-based application, reentryBase, is a planned CINS, designed to respond to the growing need for improved delivery of social and supportive services to those returning from prison and jail. Its specific aim is to build capacity for both outreach to ex-offenders and networking among and between reentry stakeholders.     

The Color Paradigm: The Impact of Colorism on the Racial Identity and Identification of Latinas

Existing research has provided scant analysis on the impact of colorism or skin color privilege and stigma on racial identity and identification among Latinos/as. This article explores the dynamics of colorism and the impact on racial identity and identification among Latinos/as of varying phenotypes. The experiences of a subset of eight Caribbean Latinas and one Chicana are used to illustrate how Latinas negotiate their racial identification and survive experiences of both stigma and privilege within the U.S. context. The article concludes with implications for social work research, practice, and pedagogy.     

Preadoption Genetic Testing: Social workers' decision-making process

Abstract

Genetic testing requested by prospective adoptive parents and/or an adoption agency prior to adoption, known as pre-adoption genetic testing, is postulated to help identify the best placement for the child. However, limited data exist about factors impacting social workers’ decision making about genetic testing and their perceptions about positive and negative implications of testing. A survey and semi-structured interview based on a pre-adoption genetic testing scenario of an inherited condition explored social workers’ perspectives and decision-making process (N?=?129). The majority reported limited education in genetics, but favored genetic testing. Results highlight the value of an interdisciplinary team in genetic testing decision making.     

This Sporting Life: the antithetical novel’s revelation of the organization and work of sport

ABSTRACT

The novel This Sporting Life by David Storey is used in this article as fictive, ethnographic data to explore the relationship between sports work, industrial organization, identity, and the management of the body. Drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu on sport, and rugby specifically, and the relationship between sport, the body, class, and rationalization, this paper argues that David Storey provides a vivid, if pessimistic, fictional, and semi-autobiographical account of the ways in which sports, and sports work specifically, is driven by management discourses of rationality and control. We examine how this functions as class exploitation where labour is embodied and expended as a form of bodily capital. Lastly, we offer a critique of the precarious social mobility that sports work promises. Through Storey’s Rugby League playing fictional anti-hero – Art Machin – we explore the central struggle between social structures and individual agency.     

Jealousy in sexual and emotional infidelity: An alternative to the evolutionary explanation

In an effort to make unequivocal the boundaries of infidelity, the present study used three infidelity scenarios (sexual infidelity, emotional infidelity, and the combination of sexual and emotional infidelity). Two other variables, gender of the participants and the extent to which they reported either few or several jealous tendencies, were included to generate a 3 × 2 × 2 independent groups design. Reactions of 317 undergraduate college students (165 women and 152 men) to the scenarios were assessed using both Smith and Ellsworth's (1985) six cognitive dimensions of emotion and a measure of emotional upset. A multivariate analysis of variance yielded significance for two of the main effects, the nature of the infidelity scenario and the gender of the participant. Univariate analyses indicated that women experienced more emotional distress over all of the conditions of infidelity, and, for women and men alike, conditions of infidelity involving a sexual component, whether alone or together with emotional infidelity, proved to be more upsetting than those involving only an emotional component.