Exploring Children/Adolescents’ Final Conversations with Dying Family Members

In the current study, the authors expanded on a program of qualitative inquiry exploring final conversations (FCs) to the understudied population of children/adolescents. Participants were 61 children/adolescents aged 5–18, who participated in semi-structured interviews regarding their FCs with a dying family member. Inductive coding analysis led the authors to discover four overarching themes of children/adolescents’ FCs messages, in order of descending prominence, are: everyday communication, messages of love, messages of individual identity, and messages related to religion/spirituality. The authors applied Functional Theory to further delineate how participants used, and continue to use, the messages from each theme within their FCs. Discussion of results, including limitations and directions for further research, is outlined.     

Responses to prenatal opioid and alcohol abuse: A review of US and Australian mandatory reporting laws

Prenatal substance use, specifically opioid and excessive alcohol use, can cause significant adverse effects for the unborn foetus in both the short-and long-term. Responses by state social systems occur on a spectrum of prevention and early intervention to support mothers. Some but not all states include reporting duties, so that professionals made aware of the situation may alert agencies that can intervene to provide appropriate support. This article will review legal duties to report maternal substance use during pregnancy in the US and Australia. We identify variations in these laws regarding who is required to report, what circumstances must be reported and what indicates child abuse or neglect. Inconsistencies in laws raise questions about the nature of different approaches, and how reforms might be made to improve provision of support. Informed by the medical literature, the contemporary context and federal policy in the US, we make recommendations for reform, and for the appropriate response to such reports.     

To Live More Comfortably with Difference An Interview with Peter Churven

Peter Churven's name has been associated with family therapy in Australia since the early days. He is remembered as the original Director of Redbank House (which pioneered whole family admissions), and for his forceful presence as the Foundation President of the N.S.W. Family Therapy Association. He was recently elected as a member of the Board for this journal. As you read his words, imagine him now and then pausing to think, swivelling in his chair, so that the creaking acts as punctuation.     

What's in a Name? The Implications of Diagnosis for People with Learning Difficulties and their Family Carers

Diagnosis plays a significant role in the shaping of individual identities and the quality of life for people with learning difficulties and their family carers. Diagnostic labels are constitutive of peoples' lives, in that they bring forth pathology, create problemsaturated stories and construct careers as patients and cases. Disabled identities of people with learning difficulties remain largely 'embodied' and within the definitional control of professionals. Whilst the acquisition of a learning difficulty label can open doors to resources, it can also lead to disrespectful and dehumanising treatment, and the severe restriction of opportunities. This paper argues that a social constructionist perspective can offer a way of thinking about diagnosis that challenges the so called 'facts' and 'truths' that underpin and support it. Working in partnership with people with learning difficulties in relation to diagnosis requires professionals to relinquish power by resisting the 'temptations of certainty' associated with diagnostic practices.     

Work Orientations and Women's Work: A Critique of Hakim's Theory of the Heterogeneity of Women

This paper is a critique of Hakim's theory of the gendered character of work with its key idea of the ‘heterogeneity of women’ centring on the distinction between those who are ‘family oriented’ and those who are ‘career oriented’. Such patterns of work commitment are claimed to be developed by early adulthood and to steer women in one direction or the other. Our critique is based on interviews with two groups of young adult women generating rich data on their attitudes to employment, families and the relationship between the two. The first group (‘single workers’) when first interviewed were single, childless and employed full-time. The second (‘early mothers’) were partnered mothers with at most part-time employment. The substance of the critique is threefold: 1.The single workers could not be clearly separated by ‘career’ or ‘family’ orientation. They wanted both, which then left them in Hakim's residual category as ‘drifters’, a wholly inappropriate characterization. 2.The early mothers were certainly homemakers but our data doubted that this was by choice and suggested that many were becoming more career oriented. 3.Longitudinal data from the single workers show the importance of analysing ‘orientation’ or other aspects of agency in the context of social structure rather than as a prime mover in itself.     

Leadership in Collaborative Community Health Partnerships

This article examines key leadership issues in community health partnerships. We assert that leadership in a partnership is differentiated from that in a traditional, hierarchical organization in that participation is voluntary and egalitarian and often entails cooperation by organizations with different cultures and agendas. Partnership leaders, accordingly, often lack formal control over members and their actions. Using qualitative analysis of 115 site‐visit interviews of participants in four partnerships in the Community Care Networks demonstration program, we identify and discuss five themes of collaborative leadership: systems thinking, vision‐based leadership, collateral leadership, power sharing, and process‐based leadership. We then discuss the multiple challenges that collaborative leadership faces in a community health partnership.     

Beyond excellence: Extending the generic approach to international public relations: The case of Bosnia

This article extends the generic approach to international public relations research. The current generic approach, based on the Excellence theory of public relations, suggests a normative framework to study and evaluate international public relations practices. This generic approach has great potential for focusing international research and clarifying infrastructure, geopolitical, legal, cultural, media, and other important variables. Unfortunately, this generic approach has been mainly used to confirm the Excellence model of public relations. Thus, it falls short of providing scholars and practitioners the tools they need to conduct and study global public relations. This paper seeks to clarify international public relations research by explicating rhetorical generic theory (RGT).     

Ways That Follow Goodness An Interview with Clive Duffy

In the State Associations there are members who do not make names for themselves writing articles or offering workshops, and yet the influence they have on the local level can be very marked. Queenslander Clive Duffy is one such. Avoiding the limelight, which in his view would feed his ego to his own harm, and diffident about being interviewed, Clive is one of those family therapists who has survived changes in fashions and approach. He belongs to the group who believe the counsellor/therapist must attend to personal blocks as a necessary preparation for and accompaniment to working with clients. This interview was seen as very appropriate for helping to launch our new occasional series Spiritual Matters.