Parental Depression and Child Outcomes: The Mediating Effects of Abuse and Neglect

Using longitudinal data on 1,813 children and parents from a nationally representative child‐welfare sample, National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well‐Being (NSCAW), this study investigated physically abusive and neglectful parenting as mediating the effects of parent depression on child mental health by developmental stage. Findings from latent growth models indicated that parental depression had a significant impact on child outcomes for all youths, but of the 2 types of parenting behaviors, only neglectful parenting mediated the relationship for preschool and school‐aged children. Neither parenting behavior mediated the effects of parental depression for adolescents.     

Protective supervision: An inquiry into the relationship between child welfare and the court system

Protective Supervision, in most states, is defined in statute as an option in which the child is allowed to remain in the home of high-risk parents under the authority of the court, with supervision provided by the child protection system. Protective Supervision provides states an option to fulfill the federal mandate, as expressed in its guidance on the Child and Family Services Review, to assure that children are safely maintained in their homes whenever possible and appropriate. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of published work on this option. Further, the relationship between child protection and the judicial system, implicit in Protective Supervision, is rarely examined. In response to this dearth of information, an exploratory study was undertaken in Minnesota, funded by the Minnesota Department of Human Services. Data were derived from focus groups in every region of the state, with both child protection and judicial system participants. This study offers insights into the complicated nature of the partnership between two complex systems — child welfare and the court system. Currently, there is wide variation in how Protective Supervision is understood and practiced. However, where there is mutual respect between child welfare and the courts, Protective Supervision offers a useful tool.     

Ageing Baby Boomers in Australia: Evidence Informing Actions for Better Retirement

The first Australian baby boomers are starting to retire. Consequently, it is essential to develop and apply a strong evidence base to facilitate their successful retirement and ongoing wellbeing. This review focuses on recent literature on pre‐retirement baby boomers to identify available research findings and gaps to be filled on retirement preparation. A notable shortage of empirical literature was found on pathways to retirement and financial plans. A trend emerged towards an intention to retire at an older age, and the main source of retirement income was expected to be superannuation. Over half of Australian boomers expect their savings to be sufficient; however, 30–50% anticipate a decline in their standard of living. The majority want the responsibility for funding retirement shared between the individual, government and employers. Further research is needed on the varying plans and expectations of men and women, of low‐skilled workers, and those from culturally diverse backgrounds.     

Roadmap to recovery: Reporting on a research taskforce supporting Indigenous responses to COVID‐19 in Australia

In April 2020 a Group of Eight Taskforce was convened, consisting of over 100 researchers, to provide independent, research‐based recommendations to the Commonwealth Government on a “Roadmap to Recovery” from COVID‐19. The report covered issues ranging from pandemic control and relaxation of social distancing measures, to well‐being and special considerations for vulnerable populations. Our work focused on the critical needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; this paper presents an overview of our recommendations to the Roadmap report. In addressing the global challenges posed by pandemics for citizens around the world, Indigenous people are recognised as highly vulnerable. At the time of writing Australia's First Nations Peoples have been largely spared from COVID‐19 in comparison to other Indigenous populations globally. Our recommendations emphasise self‐determination and equitable needs‐based funding to support Indigenous communities to recover from COVID‐19, addressing persistent overcrowded housing, and a focus on workforce, especially for regional and remote communities. These latter two issues have been highlighted as major issues of risk for Indigenous communities in Australia It remains to be seen how governments across Australia take up these recommendations to support Indigenous peoples' health and healing journey through yet another, potentially catastrophic, health crisis.     

The knower and the known

In this paper, I address a dilemma in the theory of knowledge and argue that this dilemma can be overcome by invoking the work of two well known social scientists—Marx (here considered as a sociologist) and Piaget (a psychologist). The dilemma considered is that of the relationship between what are here called independent (i.e., non-circular) and relational definitions; each form of definition has been the basis of a particular approach to the knowable (the independent definition being the basis of empiricism and the relational definition being the basis of Hegelianism) and each of these approaches can be shown to be unsatisfactory: empiricism, brilliantly successful in practice, runs itself, at the theoretical level, into the circular and the relational; while Hegelianism, although impregnable in logic, gains such impregnability at the cost of any delimitation and, hence of precision and refutability. It is argued that Marx (a follower of Hegel) as adapted by Piaget, can indeed overcome these difficulties and so present us with a theory of knowledge that makes possible an approach that is both successful in practice and reputable in logic.     

The Common Assessment Framework: the impact of the lead professional on families and professionals as part of a continuum of care in England

This paper utilizes data gathered as part of an exploratory study to assess the costs and impact of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), to examine the impact that the lead professional role had on families and workers. The study found that both families and workers believed the lead professional to be central to the CAF process, providing a range of support, coordinating multi‐agency responses to need and acting as a single point of contact between families and workers. The paper highlights the need for consideration to be given to inter‐agency working, data sharing, training for workers and the capacity implications for those taking on the role. The extent to which the lead professional might be more integrated into the continuum of support for vulnerable children and families is also examined. The paper highlights the need to consider the lead professional's role in not only preventing the need for more intensive services, such as those provided by statutory social work, but also maintaining outcomes achieved once a child protection plan is closed, or a child is reunified with his or her birth family after a period of being in care. The implications of the findings for policy and practice are discussed.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

Five reports cover the 2009 Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarians Conference, the COUNTER and Usage Data webinar, the 2009 Acquisitions Institute at Timberline Lodge, the 2009 North American Serials Interest Group Conference, and selected sessions of the 2009 annual conference of the American Library Association in Chicago, Illinois.     

The effect of artificial lighting on the arrival time of birds using garden feeding stations in winter: A missed opportunity?

The proliferation of artificial lighting at night is one of the key anthropogenic changes associated with urbanised areas as well as some non-urban areas. Disruption to natural light/dark regimes can have considerable effects on the timing of different behaviours of birds, particularly during the breeding season. However, the effect of artificial lights on the timing of behaviours during winter has received relatively little attention, despite the fact that time partitioning of foraging can have implications for avian winter survival. In this study, we assess at a landscape scale during winter, whether birds arrive at feeding stations earlier in areas with increased levels of artificial lighting using data from a citizen science project. Arrival times of the ten most commonly recorded species were associated with a combination of the density of artificial lights, temperature, rainfall and urban land cover. We found no evidence that birds advance the onset of foraging in gardens with more artificial lights nearby; contrary to our prediction, birds generally arrived later into these areas. This is possibly a response to differences in food availability or predation risk in areas with more artificial lights. We conclude that artificial light at night may not be as important for driving the timing of foraging behaviour in winter as previously thought, but it remains to be seen whether this represents a missed opportunity to extend the foraging period or an adaptive response.     

Lesbian brides: post-queer popular culture

The last decade has witnessed a proliferation of lesbian representations in European and North American popular culture, particularly within television drama and broader celebrity culture. The abundance of “positive” and “ordinary” representations of lesbians is widely celebrated as signifying progress in queer struggles for social equality. Yet, as this article details, the terms of the visibility extended to lesbians within popular culture often affirm ideals of hetero-patriarchal, white femininity. Focusing on the visual and narrative registers within which lesbian romances are mediated within television drama, this article examines the emergence of what we describe as “the lesbian normal.” Tracking the ways in which the lesbian normal is anchored in a longer history of “the normal gay,” it argues that the lesbian normal is indicative of the emergence of a broader post-feminist and post-queer popular culture, in which feminist and queer struggles are imagined as completed and belonging to the past. Post-queer popular culture is depoliticising in its effects, diminishing the critical potential of feminist and queer politics, and silencing the actually existing conditions of inequality, prejudice, and stigma that continue to shape lesbian lives.