Leaving an Institution in Flanders (Belgium): A Road to Homelessness?

People living in an institution will leave this residential context one day and have to proceed to a stable independent way of living. This transition is not without difficulties as it turns out this socially vulnerable group runs an increased risk of becoming homeless. Research in Flanders (Belgium) has shown that a considerable share of the homeless population has previously stayed in an institutional setting, mostly in youth care (48.7%), psychiatric (34.4%) and penitentiary (33.1%) institutions. Moreover, the share of homeless people with a history in one of these institutions has increased in the past decades. Institution leavers, face at least three obstacles to a stable housing situation in Flanders: a lack of affordable housing, a lack of access to (non-residential) social assistance and personal difficulties in coping with living independently. Yet, there are several programs that support institution leavers and prepare them for the transition to an independent living situation and legal developments that strengthen their position in society and on the housing market. In this paper, we explore these initiatives and developments in three case studies (Antwerp, Ghent and Leuven). Based on in-depth interviews with “street-level bureaucrats” who work in these institutions (youth care, psychiatric and penitentiary settings), social support services and social housing organizations, we reconstruct the pathways of institution leavers to the housing market, the support they receive and the experienced difficulties.     

Domestic Violence, Criminal Justice Responses and Homelessness: Finding the Connection and Addressing the Problem

As more social scientists examine the female side of social issues a host of questions are answered and further inquiries form in the wings. Two fields where much detailed and valuable information on women have been provided, and many questions still remain, are social work and criminal justice. A meeting point for these disciplines lies in the area of homelessness and females. By most accounts, a sizable proportion of homeless women, many of whom are mothers, become homeless due to domestic abuse. Knowledge of ineffective criminal justice responses to domestic violence leaves one to ponder whether there exists a connection between lack of social control in domestic abuse calls and the onset of female homelessness. The present work addresses this knowledge gap and suggests future research necessary to delineate a proposed link between weak criminal justice responses and female homelessness. Policy initiatives to correct these flaws are provided as well.     

Social work in the development of institutional care for older people in Slovenia

Social work in homes for older people in Slovenia has a special role since we have extremely institutionally-oriented care for older people. Characteristic of the development of Slovenian homes for older people is a shift in the dynamics of the orientation of the homes from a medical to a social one. Different factors influenced the shift towards a social orientation, i.e. the policy of establishing homes, the influence of sociogerontological principles, the development of social work and, recently, by their engagement with residents with dementia. In socially-oriented homes a different model of social work is used than in medically-oriented ones. The difference lies in social work methods as well as in the roles of the social worker in different areas of work with the residents, relatives and staff. By defining a model of social work in a socially-oriented home, a special field of social work with older people in the field of institutional care in Slovenia has been developed.     

Experimental evidence on the effect of incentives and domain in risk aversion and discounting tasks

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - Environmental policy evaluation is often criticised for employing discount rates that have little grounding in research. Yet, experimental research aimed at...     

Getting Out and About: The Relationship Between Urban Form and Senior Travel Patterns

As the overall U.S. population expands outward from the central city and core suburbs and as people age in place, more seniors will reside in suburban and exurban locations. This research seeks to determine whether older adults who live in areas with differing urban forms experience travel pattern variations under controls for other factors related to travel. We analyzed data from a telephone survey of a random sample of seniors aged 75 years and older and we employed a unique approach for establishing the urban form of their residential settings. The results show that urban form does influence travel patterns, including the number of trips and transportation mode, and suggest that the construction of compact, mixed-use communities where today's older adults can age in place may be part of the solution to addressing the mobility needs of our aging population.     

Sanctioning as a social norm: Expectations of non-strategic sanctioning in a public goods game experiment

Sanctioning increases cooperation in public goods games, but not indiscriminately under all conditions and in all societies, and the mechanisms by which sanctioning exercises its impact on behavior are yet to be studied in detail. We show experimentally that in the presence of sanctioning, our experimental subjects adjust their behavior in order to avoid being a free rider. They do this not only in the STANDARD sanctions treatment, where they directly experience any sanctions assigned to them, but also in our main treatment, the SECRET sanctions treatment, where no information on sanctions received is available until the end of the experiment. We observe no such free riding avoidance in the treatment without sanctioning. The mere knowledge that sanctions might be assigned increases cooperation among the members of our subject pool; subjects expect that non-strategic sanctioning occurs against the free riders. Moreover, these expectations are correct as we observe a similar pattern and extent of sanctioning in both treatments. We propose that sanctioning in itself is a social norm and may be culturally dependent, as suggested in the literature.     

Posture Development in Infants at Heightened versus Low Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorders

Evidence suggests that children and adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) exhibit difficulties with postural control. Retrospective video studies of infants later diagnosed with ASD indicate that infants who eventually receive an ASD diagnosis exhibit delays in postural development. This study investigates early posture development prospectively and longitudinally in 22 infants at heightened biological risk for ASD (HR) and 18 infants with no such risk (Low Risk; LR). Four HR infants received an autism diagnosis (AD infants) at 36 months. Infants were videotaped at home at 6, 9, 12, and 14 months during everyday activities and play. All infant postures were coded and classified as to whether or not they were infant‐initiated. Relative to LR infants, HR infants were slower to develop skill in sitting and standing postures. AD infants exhibited substantial delays in the emergence of more advanced postures and initiated fewer posture changes. Because posture advances create opportunities for infants to interact with objects and people in new and progressively more sophisticated ways, postural delays may have cascading effects on opportunities for infant exploration and learning. These effects may be greater for infants with ASD, for whom posture delays are more significant.     

Domestic violence beliefs and perceptions among college students

This study builds on current research, investigating the relationships between sociodemographic variables and domestic violence attitudes and beliefs among college students. Data from the Relationship Characteristics Study conducted in 2001, which includes a sample of 1,938 college students, are used to replicate and extend the research of Carlson and Worden (2001, 2005), the developers of the attitudes and beliefs items. In addition, the research portends to analyze factors associated with domestic violence causation endorsement, physical and sexual abuse, stalking, and verbal abuse beliefs, including gender, race and ethnicity, university year, parents' education, family income, parents' marital status, and relationship status. Results are consistent with the rates reported by the item developers. Further, results demonstrate that sociodemographic variables are correlated with physical and sexual abuse and verbal abuse beliefs and causation endorsement.     

Propagation of Uncertainty in Risk Assessments: The Need to Distinguish Between Uncertainty Due to Lack of Knowledge and Uncertainty Due to Variability

In quantitative uncertainty analysis, it is essential to define rigorously the endpoint or target of the assessment. Two distinctly different approaches using Monte Carlo methods are discussed: (1) the end point is a fixed but unknown value (e.g., the maximally exposed individual, the average individual, or a specific individual) or (2) the end point is an unknown distribution of values (e.g., the variability of exposures among unspecified individuals in the population). In the first case, values are sampled at random from distributions representing various "degrees of belief" about the unknown "fixed" values of the parameters to produce a distribution of model results. The distribution of model results represents a subjective confidence statement about the true but unknown assessment end point. The important input parameters are those that contribute most to the spread in the distribution of the model results. In the second case, Monte Carlo calculations are performed in two dimensions producing numerous alternative representations of the true but unknown distribution. These alternative distributions permit subject confidence statements to be made from two perspectives: (1) for the individual exposure occurring at a specified fractile of the distribution or (2) for the fractile of the distribution associated with a specified level of individual exposure. The relative importance of input parameters will depend on the fractile or exposure level of interest. The quantification of uncertainty for the simulation of a true but unknown distribution of values represents the state-of-the-art in assessment modeling.