Local Authority Intake Teams

Summary Amongst the many developments in social services organisationin the decade since Seebohm, specialist Intake Teams responsiblefor all initial referrals and short term work received by anArea Team, remain a popular form of local organization. Thispaper describes a small national survey of English local authoritiesto collect information on both intake teams and their long termcounterparts, and briefly outlines some of the major findings.The survey produced a broad picture of both the present structureof local authority fieldwork departments, and the personal characteristicsof social workers and their team leaders. The paper goes onto examine the relationship between intake and long term teams,particularly in terms of referral rates, relative caseloadsand the case transfer process; and concludes with an outlineof teams satisfaction with the intake system, and some indicationsof desired future developments.     

A robust logistic discrimination model

Logistic discrimination is a well documented method for classifying observations to two or more groups. However, estimation of the discriminant rule can be seriously affected by outliers. To overcome this, Cox and Ferry produced a robust logistic discrimination technique. Although their method worked in practice, parameter estimation was sometimes prone to convergence problems. This paper proposes a simplified robust logistic model which does not have any such problems and which takes a generalized linear model form. Misclassification rates calculated in a simulation exercise are used to compare the new method with ordinary logistic discrimination. Model diagnostics are also presented. The newly proposed model is then used on data collected from pregnant women at two district general hospitals. A robust logistic discriminant is calculated which can be used to predict accurately which method of feeding a woman will eventually use: breast feeding or bottle feeding.     

Social Work Today

Correspondence to Chris Jones, Department of Social Work and Community Studies, University of Central Lancashire, Preston PR1 2TQ Summary This paper argues that over the last fifteen years social workin Britain has undergone a significant transformation. Underincreasing attack, both in the media and from government andits new right ideologues, social work has faced an increasinglyimpoverished client group with fewer resources and growing uncertaintyabout its legitimate role. In this context, legislative, administrativeand financial changes have pushed social work into an increasinglyantagonistic relationship with clients and have left it demoralizedand without a clear sense of direction. The paper looks at theway this change has come about and argues that it has profoundimplications for the future of social work in the reduced welfarestate of the 1990s.     

Incidence of Drug and Solvent Abuse in 'Normal' Fourth and Fifth Year Comprehensive School Children--Some Socio-behavioural Characteristics

Summary A sample of 807 fourth and fifth formers completed a self-reportstudy that yielded levels of solvent and drug misuse. Nineteenper cent were involved with some type of misuse, 4% with solventabuse only, 4% with serious (hard) drug abuse and 15% drug abusemainly involving cannabis. Significant social characteristicsfound amongest the abusers were higher levels of father unemployement(28%), absent parent (32%) and belonging to a larger family.Abuse was significantly asociated with under-age drinking, vandalism,truancy, fighting and smoking. The majority of the sample (95%),however, considered abuse to be a serious matter.     

ON THE NATURE OF RECIPROCAL MOTIVES

Data from 692 subjects in 11 experimental treatments provide a systematic exploration of the existence and nature of reciprocal behavior in two-person games. The experimental design discriminates between motivations of reciprocity and (nonreciprocal) other-regarding preferences. The existence of positive reciprocity is found to be dependent on the level of social distance but not the level of monetary payoff. The larger context in which a decision is made is found to have a significant effect on negative reciprocity. These findings on payoff levels, social distance, decision context, and reciprocity have implications for both theoretical modeling and experimental design. (JEL C70 , C91 , D63 , D64 )     

WHEN ARE WOMEN MORE GENEROUS THAN MEN?

Previous research on gender differences in behavior has led to seemingly contradictory findings about generosity. From data generated by 290 subject pairs, we find that women are more sensitive than men to the costs of generous actions when deciding whether to be generous. The factors that affect the level of generosity observed in our experiments are reciprocal motivation, the level of money payoffs, and the level of social distance in the experimental protocol. The relatively greater sensitivity of women to the costs of generous behavior can explain most of the apparent inconsistencies in previously reported findings. (JEL C70 , C91 , D63 , D64 )     

Making case conferences more effective: a checklist for monitoring and training

SUMMARY. The effectiveness of children's case conferences has been called into doubt. This article presents an observiation checklist for participants that may be used in training and may be adapted by individuals and groups in the field for monitoring their own effectiveness. It proposes a detailed examination of the preparation of a conference, the way discussion is initiated, the decision forming process, the behaviour of participants, including oneself and the involvement of parents, guardians and children.     

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MINIMUM WAGE LEGISLATION

Two questions are addressed in this paper. (A) Why do labor unions and certain employer organizations respectively promote and impede minimum wage legislation? (B) Do these groups have significant impacts on minimum wages? Question (A) is examined in the context of models that identify the economic self-interest of unionized skilled workers and capitalists in legal wage floors. Question (B) is approached by a median legislator utility maximization model that leads to Tobit estimation of the relationship between state minimum wage rates and measures of statewide organized labor and capital and average hourly earnings.