Outre‐Manche/Across the Channel: Ongoing Training and Gender in France and Britain

The French state‐levy system of ongoing training at work has not provided greater access for women than the laissez‐faire British system. While headlines figures suggest that women receive more training than men in Britain and that the gap has also closed for well‐qualified women in France, qualitative analysis shows that this does not indicate greater gender equity. The societal effect approach is useful for cross‐national comparison within the sphere of economic organization but must be combined with analysis of the gender order to account for differences and similarities in social reproduction. The case of the insurance industry provides detailed empirical evidence of the issues underlying this, particularly women's availability for ongoing training at work. The situation of women in each country is inextricably linked to a complex interdependence of a multitude of variables, some of which are similar, such as the workings of patriarchy, and some of which are different, such as state configurations of childcare infrastructure.     

THE FAMILY CRISIS INTERVENTION LITERATURE: WHAT IS MEANT BY “FAMILY”?*

Family crisis intervention is a rapidly growing area of clinical care in family therapy which lacks clear conceptualization, especially with respect to how “family” fits into crisis intervention theory. This paper integrates recent concepts from the family therapy literature into three views: family as background, family as context, and family as a unit. The family crisis intervention literature (56 publications) is reviewed and categorized according to these three views. Clarity in how “family” is viewed and consistency between theory and practice are examined. Recommendations for improving the conceptualization of “family” in family crisis intervention theory and practice are made.     

Looking Forward Not Looking Back: The Evaluation of Community Living

This article outlines the development of evaluative methods within the field of mental handicap services. It suggests that evaluators have too often taken for granted the tacit assumptions underlying service models, using these to determine the criteria for evaluating success. It argues that evaluators should be more explicit about the values they adopt, and what patterns of life services should be enabling people to achieve. By more closely linking evaluation criteria to what people with a mental handicap should achieve, evaluation can become more effective in promoting positive change in service models. The article describes an approach developed by the authors for the evaluation of the 'All-Wales Strategy for the Development of Services for Mentally Handicapped People'.     

An analysis of two probabilistic model induction techniques

Two probabilistic model induction techniques, cart and constructor, are compared, via a series of experiments, in terms of their ability to induce models that are both interpretable and predictive. The experiments show that, although both algorithms are able to deliver classifiers with predictive performance close to that of the optimal Bayes rule,constructor is able to generate a probabilistic model that is more easily interpretable than the cart model. On the other hand, cart is a more mature algorithm and is capable of handling many more situations (e.g., real-valued training sets) thanconstructor. A variety of characteristics of both algorithms are compared, and suggestions for future research are made.     

Participation in Practice

This paper is one of a series written by members of the Mental Handicap Research Project at the University College of North Wales in connection with the All-Wales Strategy. Previous papers describe local arrangements for the planning of new services and discuss in general terms issues concerning partnership and participation. This paper describes modes of parental participation in the planning of new services for the mentally handicapped.     

Marital relationships as a cause of death: an analysis of occupational mortality and the hidden consequences of marriage--some U.K. data.

The relationship between a married woman's life expectancy and the occupation of her husband is explored using official data for the United Kingdom for 1959-1963 and 1970-1972. The author notes that not only are there large and specific effects of employees' occupations on life expectancy and mortality rates, but that these mortality differentials also affect the spouses of those in high-risk occupations. It is suggested that such occupational risks are transmitted via the domestic psychological environment to the married women concerned, and thus the males' job risks affect the life expectancy of both partners.