Desistance-Focused Treatment and Asset-Based Programming for Juvenile Offender Reintegration: A Review of Research Evidence

Research indicates that juvenile delinquency, if not intervened earlier, could potentially lead to the youth’s future involvement with the criminal justice system as an adult. This study identifies research evidence to support the building of a desistance-focused pathway for juvenile offenders positively reentering society. It examines the “desistance” components of treatment programs and assets that help ex-offending adolescents achieve success in reintegrating back to the community. A review of research evidence summarized the empirical data from twelve studies published between 2007 and 2017. Diverse service components were found in addressing the treatment needs of young offenders, indicating that multiple services are needed to lower their recidivism rate. These diverse components were benchmarked with the 40-asset model developed by the Search Institute, providing additional support that these service components are resilience-based and desistance-focused. Both internal and external assets were emphasized in these reviewed studies. Highlighted are the holistic nature of asset-based programs and service components for helping juveniles gain internal awareness and access external resources. A balanced treatment model is recommended with an emphasis on building assets for designing a holistic plan of reintegration to help juveniles reenter society and stay crime-free.     

Collaboration with Caveats: Research–Practice Exchange in Planning

Abstract

Researcher and practitioner collaboration in urban planning is both critical to good outcomes and problematic to achieve in reality. Collaboration has the potential for new partnerships, better research problem definition, improved research design and greater impact on practice and policy. However, politics, stakeholder agendas and funding bodies bring pressures and constraints, for which research professionals require a broader set of skills to manage. We examine researcher–practitioner collaboration as part of an action research project on urban greening in Australia. Focusing on a stakeholder engagement workshop, we examine the mechanisms used to overcome barriers to research-practice exchange. We find overt consideration of common barriers to access and use of research when planning collaboration exercises can help facilitate more productive engagement, creating spaces for mutual understanding and generating shared objectives. However, we also find that efforts at collaboration challenge traditional research practices, involve tensions and caveats, and require a different mode of researcher engagement.     

The Tyranny of Fit: Yet another Barrier to Mainstream Employment for Disabled People in Sheltered Employment

Policies that encourage the aspirations of disabled people for mainstream employment might be an effective way to increase their workforce participation rate. This study aims to determine which people in sheltered employment aspire to a job beyond their current sheltered employment job. We asked 64 people with sheltered employment jobs about their workplace and job fit, their intentions to stay in their current job and their future job aspirations. The key finding is that perceptions of fit indirectly and adversely affect aspirations via intention to stay. Participants who felt they fitted planned to keep working at their sheltered workplace, but a stronger intention to stay made it less likely that they could identify an alternative to sheltered employment. These results were not influenced by age or the time spent in sheltered employment. Policy should therefore support people in sheltered employment to develop realistic job aspirations. Helping disabled people to identify opportunities beyond sheltered employment can avoid complacency and free up sheltered job opportunities for other disabled people. But policy changes are required to leverage sheltered employment as a first step for disabled people to develop mainstream job aspirations and facilitate transitioning beyond sheltered employment job options.     

Building a Bicultural Bridge

ABSTRACT

The balancing act of living between two cultures can have a significant impact on the development of adolescent Latinas living in the United States. Many adolescent Latinas, particularly second generation, live with two sets of cultural values that are often in conflict with one another. This case study illustrates the importance of understanding the impact of acculturation on the individual and the family. Issues of identity, biculturalism, and bilingualism—specifically the phenomenon of language switching—are dismantled in this case study to gain deeper insight into the unique experience that second-generation Latinas undergo when negotiating two cultural orientations. These findings are important to consider when working with the Latino population as they represent one of the largest immigrant groups and the most rapidly growing group in the United States.     

Return of the Nanny: Public Policy towards In‐home Childcare in the UK,Canada and Australia

Research on early childhood education and care (ECEC) policy focuses overwhelmingly on formal, centre‐based provision and, to a lesser extent, on family day care (or childminding) provided in the homes of registered carers. Comparatively little research addresses the policy treatment of care provided in the child's home by nannies and au pairs. This article examines the position of in‐home childcare in Australia, the UK and Canada, and the varied nature and extent of public funding and regulation. Introducing a new dimension into comparative studies of ECEC, it also explores how shifts in migration policy in each country have intersected with ECEC funding and regulation to reshape the recruitment and employment of in‐home child carers. Australia, the UK and Canada are all liberal, market‐oriented countries, but there is considerable diversity in the way governments support and regulate in‐home childcare, their rationales for so doing, and in the connections between childcare and migration. We argue that connecting the analysis of in‐home childcare to migration policies raises new questions about the classification and comparison of ECEC policies.