Teaching Note—MSW Student Perceptions of Learning Advanced Clinical Practice Skills Through the Flipped Classroom

The flipped classroom, with its focus on student-centered learning and active student engagement, is a growing trend in social work education. This article presents an innovative way of delivering practice content through the flipped classroom model, which can be adapted for any level of social work education. It walks readers through the steps of developing the course and the successes and challenges of the flip, particularly with an incorporated skills lab component. Additionally, this article shares student reflections on the development and execution of the course, with specific feedback on the experiential learning environment, discussions surrounding instructor workload and preparation, and implications for future iterations of the course from students who had very little prior technologically centered learning experiences.     

Access to social services as a rite of integration: Power,rights, and identity

Access to social services is a multifaceted and multifactorial process, involving social policy lines, services organization, and professional front line practices. It appears to have a crucial role in how personal social services work: depending on the way the process is handled, access to social services could provide a bridge to an inclusive and solidarizing community or worsen discrimination and marginalization. Many underline how studying the actual encounters between citizens and practitioners can provide a privileged site to highlight the interconnections between the abovementioned factors. This is the focus of our research that explored access in a specific Italian region using a case study strategy. After a pilot study, the main points of access to social services were identified, and three units were selected as best examples of different approaches. The three units were explored using mainly qualitative methods inspired by ethnography. We were able to gain in depth understanding of three cultural approaches to access, defined as the “ethical duty,” the “good organization,” and the “professional approach” and reach an in‐depth understanding of their impact on access. There is a vast literature on the power of street‐level bureaucrats, seen as similar to gatekeepers. However, our research suggests that specific organizational cultures also play an important part: different organizational cultures may impact the implementation of local social policy, the organizational procedures, and social workers' practices.     

Personal wellbeing among ethnic Koreans in China's Northeast

This study investigates personal wellbeing among a sample of ethnic Koreans in China's Northeast using the eight-item Personal Wellbeing Index (PWI). The PWI demonstrated good psychometric properties, consistent with previous studies. The data revealed a moderate level of personal wellbeing (PWI score = 70.3) and the results supported the Theory of Subjective Wellbeing Homeostasis, suggesting that strong external and internal buffers protect the HPM for ethnic Koreans, despite the onslaught of marketisation and urbanisation in China that are threatening to undermine Koreans' sense of ethnic identity. The predictors of personal wellbeing were found to be age (with a nonlinear relationship), education, gender, income, marital status and the city in which the individual lives.     

How Children and Young People Influence Policy‐Makers: Lessons from Nicaragua

This article describes a participatory research project, which explored four case studies of children and young people's successful political advocacy in Nicaragua. The analysis combined a human rights‐based approach and a human development approach, and included concepts of multiple settings and levels, interrelated participation spaces, children and young people's citizenship, inclusion and exclusion, democracy, advocacy and empowerment. The main problems faced by children and young people seeking to influence policy‐makers were identified as adultism, dependency and lack of accountability. The research identified pre‐conditions, participation spaces and ways of organising for effective advocacy, and facilitation methods that had proved effective. It concludes that children and young people who achieve effective advocacy are generally self‐empowered, but can count on effective adult support and facilitation. They work through coordination with the authorities and not by clashing with them, but need to ensure effective follow up if they want politicians to keep their promises.     

CONSTRUCTING A HEALTH AND SOCIAL INDICATOR FRAMEWORK FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY HEALTH RESEARCH

Health and social indicators that capture the distinct historical, social, and cultural contexts of Indigenous communities can play an important role in informing the planning and delivery of community interventions. There is currently considerable interest in cataloguing and vetting meaningful community-level health and social indicators that could be applied to research and health promotion activities in Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, inclusive of conventional indicators as well as measures developed specifically for use in or with Indigenous communities. To avoid haphazard selection of indicators, and to assure the comprehensiveness and relevance of any given set of indicators, a framework that can accommodate and conceptually classify indicators representing a full range of domains is required. We report here on the development of a conceptual framework, by which Indigenous community indicators, and more general community-level social indicators, can be sorted, catalogued, and systematically classified within four hierarchical levels. The indicator framework was developed across Canada, Australia and New Zealand in consultation with academic researchers and Indigenous community stakeholders, building from established health and social indicator systems. The Indigenous indicator framework permits Indigenous communities, public health researchers, and funding agencies to compare and select the most appropriate indicators for application in specific contexts from the multitude of existing indicators.     

Family and Nonfamily Role Configurations in Two British Cohorts

The aim of this paper is to examine variations in the combination of social roles during times of social change. We specify a latent class approach to examine role configurations for individuals in their early 30s, establishing a typology of how work‐ and family‐related roles combine within individuals born 12 years apart and examine their antecedents. Drawing on data collected for two British Birth Cohorts born in 1958 (N = 10,706) and 1970 (N = 11,005), we provide empirical evidence of both consistency and change in life course patterns. Findings are discussed in terms of destandardization, differentiation, and individualization of the life course in times of social change and their implications for family research within a life course perspective.     

The Role of Social Networks in Immigrant Women’s Political Incorporation

This article examines how immigrant women’s social networks affect their propensity to vote and to participate in unconventional political activities, as well as their knowledge of politics and government services and programs. Our primary source of data is a telephone survey of women living in Canada’s two largest metropolitan areas. Our findings show that contrary to the social capital literature, bonding ties do not exert strong negative effects on political incorporation, while bridging ties are not as helpful as hypothesized. What is important for immigrant women are the resources that are embedded in their social networks.