Nonmarital Fertility and the Effects of Divorce Rates on Youth Suicide Rates

Using pooled, time‐series data for a sample of 15 developed nations, we assess the effect of divorce rates on gender‐specific suicide rates for youths aged 15 – 19 with models of relative cohort size, lagged nonmarital fertility, and an interaction term for divorce rates and nonmarital fertility. The results reveal that, for young men, relative cohort size is positively related to suicide rates, and divorce rates interact with lagged nonmarital fertility. The interaction effect indicates that increases in divorces are especially consequential for suicide cohorts of male youths who were born in periods of high nonmarital fertility. For female youths, only divorce rates exert a significant effect on suicide rates, and it is a positive, main effect.     

Combating elder and dependent adult mistreatment: the role of the clinical psychologist

Among the many different professionals who work to address elder and dependent adult mistreatment, the clinical psychologist performs a function that is not well documented. The experiences of a clinical psychologist attached to a medical response team and an elder abuse forensic center provide insight into this complex and multifaceted role. Case examples from an elder abuse forensic center illustrate the breadth of referral questions that a clinical psychologist addresses. This information may be of use to those who would argue that these services be made widely available to elder abuse professionals such as social workers, public guardians, and those in the criminal justice system. The case studies also may be useful for training purposes.     

Identifying the barriers and challenges to voting by residents in nursing homes and assisted living settings

To ascertain the need for and to inform development of guidelines for voting in long-term care settings, we conducted a telephone survey of Philadelphia nursing (n = 31) and assisted living (n = 20) settings following the 2003 election. Substantial variability existed in procedures used for registration and voting, in staff attitudes, and in the estimated proportion of residents who voted (29%+/-28, range 0-100%). Residents who wanted to vote were unable to do so at nearly one-third of sites, largely due to procedural problems. Nearly two-thirds of facilities indicated they assessed residents' voting capacity before the election. However, methods differed and may have disenfranchised residents who were actually competent to vote. Current procedures in many facilities fail to protect voting rights. These data suggest that rights might be better protected if election officials took charge of registration, filing absentee ballot requests, ballot completion, and trained LTC facility staff on voters' rights and reasonable accommodations.     

Role Perceptions of Foster Care in African American Kinship and Nonkinship Foster Parents: A Quantitative Analysis

This article reports on a study that examined a cohort of African American kinship (n = 57) and nonkinship (n = 53) foster parents' perceptions of their role responsibilities as a foster care provider. The Foster Parent Role Perception (FPRP) scale was used to measure perceived role responsibility. Results indicated that both the kinship and nonkinship foster parents perceived their primary role responsibilities as that of caring for the needs of the foster child(ren), while perceiving much less role responsibility for working with the biological family of the child(ren) or partnering with the agency. The implications of these findings for practice are discussed.     

Work and Non-Pathological Gambling

Most economists believe that people would value an additional $1,000 in income more if they were poor than if rich, but if so, people should not gamble according to standard expected utility theory. Thus, economists have been challenged to explain the pervasiveness of gambling in human behavior. A recently proposed solution to this theoretical challenge (Nyman 2004; Nyman et al. in Journal of Socio-Economics 37:2492–2504, 2008) suggests that, because having to work for one’s income is a fact of life in market economies, many individuals view the winnings from gambling not only as additional income, but as additional income for which one does not need to work. As a result, individuals, and especially those who are disadvantaged in the labor market, attach a utility premium to gambling winnings and gamble because of that. This utility premium would explain the pervasiveness of gambling in society, especially among the economically disadvantaged. This paper reviews the economic approaches to explaining non-pathological gambling, presents an overview of the new theory, and uses data from the National Epidemiological Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions from 2001 to test it. The results indicate that the respondent’s work characteristics explain the decision to gamble in a way that is consistent with theory.     

Theoretical Support and Other Considerations in Using Simulated Clients to Educate Social Workers

This article builds on literature from many helping disciplines supporting the use of simulated clients (sometimes referred to as standardized patients) in training professional students, explaining why the use of simulated clients is more effective in developing clinical skills as compared with student-to-student role-plays. Psychodynamic and Bowen intergenerational family theory, critical to the development of social work knowledge, is used to support the use of simulated clients to portray clients with challenging and complex lives. Risks and benefits of using simulated clients is discussed, along with recommendations to educational programs regarding ways to effectively use this experiential learning method.     

Narrating Adoption: Resisting Adoption as “Second Best” in Online Stories of Domestic Adoption Told by Adoptive Parents

Framed in narrative theory and relational dialectics theory, one hundred online stories of domestic adoption told by adoptive parents were qualitatively analyzed, revealing four primary discourses of adoption that challenge the idea that adoption is a second-best way to parent. Narrative beginnings were dominated by a discourse of adoption as a valuable alternative to pregnancy. Narrative middles-and-ends featured two discourses of how the adoption process unfolds: adoption as a worthwhile struggle guided by destiny and adoption as a smooth and predictable process. Intertwined with these process-oriented constructions of adoption was a discourse of adoption as communal kinning, which emphasized a hybrid family form comprised of both biological and nonbiological ties.     

The Australian child support reforms: a critical evaluation

The Australian Child Support Scheme aims to ensure that children continue to be supported financially should their parents separate or never live together. Sweeping changes to the Australian Child Support Scheme were introduced between 2006 and 2008, featuring a dramatically different system for the calculation of child support and a more rigorous enforcement regime. The reforms were intended to respond to ongoing concerns about equity, and to changes in social expectations and practices in gender, work, and parenting. In this article we summarise key findings from a large cross‐sequential study of the child support reforms. Although the new formula initially led to lower child support payments, and an increase in the proportion of separated mothers experiencing income disadvantage, payments two years later had increased slightly. More broadly, the new scheme appears to have resulted in little change in separated parents' policy knowledge, parenting arrangements, perceptions of fairness, and child support compliance. Taken together, these findings suggest that Australia may not have made as much progress as it would have liked in this thorny area of social policy – especially in relation to compliance and perceptions of fairness.     

A comparison of three maximum likelihood models for stage-frequency data

Summary A comparison has been made between the estimates obtained from maximum likelihood estimation of gamma, inverse normal, and normal distribution models for stage-frequency data. Results have been compared for six of sets of test data, and from many sets of simulated data. It is concluded that (1) some estimates may differ substantially between the models, (2) estimates from the correct model have little bias, and estimated standard errors are generally close to theoretical values, (3) there are problems in determining degrees of freedom for chi-squared goodness of fit tests, so that it is best to compare test statistics with simulated distributions, and (4) goodness of fit tests may not discriminate well between the three models.