The relationship between child disability and living arrangement in child welfare

The influence of disabilities on placement outcomes was examined for 277 children who were removed from their biological parents due to substantiated maltreatment. Results indicated that children with a disability were less likely to reunify and more likely to reside in nonkin foster care two years later than typical children. Children with cognitive, emotional /behavioral, and physical disabilities were over four times more likely to be permanently living in nonkin foster care than to be reunified.     

Re-Examining Evelyn Hooker: Setting the Record Straight with Comments on Schumm's (2012) Reanalysis

Evelyn Hooker's research comparing the mental health of 30 male homosexuals to 30 male heterosexuals may be the most influential study in the history of social science. The American Psychological Association (APA) claims her work was the major reason it began advocating for acceptance of homosexuality. It led the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to eliminate homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And it impacted the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 legalization of sodomy in Lawrence v Texas.

Hooker reportedly believed experts would be unable to distinguish homosexuals from heterosexuals on psychological tests. Re-examination of her work indicates that Hooker's study was neither rigorous nor reliable. Among other problems, homosexual subjects were easily identified on test protocols; her reports of how she obtained her samples were incomplete and contradictory; and her study generated results supportive of obsession/compulsivity in homosexuals.

Thus Hooker's study was seriously flawed. Moreover, because it was marketed by the APA as central in transforming homosexual activity from an illness/crime into acceptable behavior—yet Hooker did not correct those who mischaracterized her work—APA misrepresentations of Hooker over the past 40 years appear to be more in line with ideology than science.     

Policies and programmes to end homelessness in Australia: Learning from international practice

Parsell C, Jones A, Head B. Policies and programmes to end homelessness in Australia: Learning from international practice. Many welfare states throughout the industrialised world have recently implemented policies to achieve targeted reductions in homelessness. These policy and welfare initiatives differ across national contexts. They are similar, however, in moving away from social programmes that have essentially ‘managed homelessness’ towards interventions that seek to permanently end homelessness. Australia has recently adopted similar homelessness policy objectives. This article examines the manner in which Australian homelessness policy has been converging with international policy directions. More specifically, the article scrutinises Australian social programmes adopted from the UK and USA as a means to achieve strategic goals of reducing homelessness. It argues that although Australian homelessness policy objectives are converging with international policy, Australian programmes modelled on international successes do not have some of the elements shown elsewhere to be crucial for achieving sustainable reductions in homelessness. This may become central to explaining programme outcomes in future years. Key Practitioner Message: ?Strategies aimed at permanently ending homelessness represent a significant shift to contemporary professional practice;?Homelessness programmes internationally are now characterised by their branding or identification with evidence‐based models;?It is important to critically scrutinise these models, examining their core elements and the manner in which they are appropriated and incorporated across jurisdictions.     

Older people’s perspectives on dignity: the benefits and challenges of a qualitative longitudinal approach to researching experiences of later life

Abstract

This article discusses findings from a qualitative longitudinal study of dignity in later life, which focused on the perspectives of older people at a time when their need for help and support was increasing as a result of long-term illness. It reflects critically on the methodology for its ability to generate knowledge about this eventful and unstable period of the life-course. It is argued that a longitudinal qualitative approach provides the optimum conditions for researching older people’s perspectives on their health and illness as well as on their experiences of being helped and supported. It sheds light on the changes they faced in their relationships, their home environments and their daily lives as well as how they dealt with these changes while maintaining their dignity.     

The heterogeneity of children and their experiences in kinship care

Increasingly, children in need of out-of-home care are being placed in kinship care, yet few studies have followed their placement histories longitudinally to determine if these children constitute a homogeneous group or heterogeneous subgroups. This study of 484 children in kinship care in San Diego County, California, indicates that children in kinship care have markedly different sociodemographic and maltreatment histories, as well as heterogeneous placement experiences.     

Violent Marriages

This paper addresses the questions of why many people are violent toward those they claim to love and why many people stay with those who hurt them. Patterns of relationship within violent marriages, the characteristics of individuals involved and societal values are explored for answers. Some thoughts on therapy are presented.     

Credit and civilization

This paper analyses financial credit in order to re-examine the work of Norbert Elias, particularly his association of interdependency complexity with social discipline, and his approach to contradiction. Following a discussion of these issues, the paper examines Elias's writing on money and explores the emergence of financial credit networks in early modern England. Attention is paid to credit networks and social discipline, to credit and the state, and to the contradictory images associated with the transition to modern cash economies. From one perspective, early modern credit networks might be read as a confirmation of Elias, particularly his argument that interdependency complexity, changing power balances and self-restraint are interwoven. Yet the development of modern cash money raises questions, not just in relation to Elias's treatment of money, but also with regard to his assumptions about social discipline and his approach to ambivalence and contradiction. Drawing on the foregoing discussion, the paper argues that the relation between interdependency complexity and social discipline is contingent and variable, and that interdependency complexity may simultaneously encourage contradictory processes, such as those of civilizing and barbarity.     

A NEW PROCEDURE FOR ASSESSING LARGE SETS OF CORRELATIONS

In this paper, a new test of the hypothesis that all the correlations between a set of variables are zero is proposed. It is based on the asymptotic behaviour of the largest of the observed correlation coefficients. Here “asymptotic” refers to the size of the correlation matrix considered. Simulations show that the critical levels, calculated using the asymptotic theory, are conservative but quite accurate, even for small correlation matrices.