Calculating the costs of local authority care for children with contrasting needs

Activity data from practitioners can be combined with financial data to develop unit costs for the eight processes that underpin social work activity for children looked after away from home. The frequency and duration of processes can then be calculated, and the data are used to cost different pathways through care. Costs vary according to children's needs, types of placements and local policies and practices. Combinations of need add to costs. This paper compares the costs accrued by children who show no evidence of additional support needs with a group of troubled children with emotional or behavioural difficulties who also commit offences. The latter show the most costly care pathways and also appear to experience the least positive outcomes, leading us to question whether different configurations of services might better meet their needs.     

Working With Parents of Gender-Variant Children: Using Social Action as an Emancipatory Research Framework

This article examines and reflects on the methodology used in a research project that involved group work activities with parents of gender-variant children. Gender variance in children remains a topic people talk little about. Discussions about people who express themselves differently from the social norms attached to their birth sex, to a large extent, remain rarely discussed. They challenge a society organized largely on the basis of a binary understanding of identity, one that belongs to either male or female. This article discusses the concept of oppression as being central to the experiences of gender-variant children and young people and their parents, and it proposes social action research as a compatible and appropriate research framework for exploring their experiences. We describe the research process, identify its achievements, and explore issues that had to be confronted. We suggest that traditional research structures may benefit from being revisited in order to allow emancipatory research to more fully achieve its potential for both research and social action.     

Developing cultural competence with LDS clients: Utilizing spiritual genograms in social work practice

ABSTRACT

In recent years, social work has increasingly focused on spirituality and religion as key elements of cultural competence. Consequently, specific strategies have been developed to provide the most appropriate interventions for religious clients. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is the fourth largest and the fastest growing church in the United States and is one of the fastest growing churches worldwide. In an effort to facilitate cultural competence with LDS clients, a spiritual assessment tool was developed based upon the genogram. Evaluation of this tool was facilitated through a survey of 100 practitioners. Participants liked the idea of using a spiritual genogram and felt it would be a useful tool in therapy. In general, they thought the questions associated with the spiritual genogram were appropriate and consistent with LDS culture, although numerous suggestions for improvement were offered.     

Working at the edge: Emotional labour in the spectre of violence

Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with police officers, door(wo)men and prison officers we present intimate, emotional and sometimes harrowing accounts of both the physical and emotional pain routinely endured by those employed as agents of social control. This article positions labour undertaken in such contexts as ‘edgework'; exploring how the boundary, or ‘edge', between safety and danger is negotiated and managed ‘in the moment' through embodied performances of empathetic and antipathetic emotional labour and emotional neutrality. Placing the concepts of edgework and emotional labour in dialogue, we open up a space in which to explore gendered conceptualizations of emotional labour and offer a more feminist appreciation of edgework that moves us beyond narrow concerns with pleasure, to account for embodied experience and emotional performance. In so doing, this article offers a unique insight into the emotional labour repertoires of both men and women who work in the spectre of violence.     

Sexual agency,risk and vulnerability: a scoping review of young Indigenous Australians’ sexual health

This review of qualitative research examining young Indigenous Australians’ sexual health highlights the profoundly social nature of young people’s sexual lives. Nineteen peer reviewed published papers were identified for inclusion. Findings reveal efforts made by some young Indigenous Australians to control their sexual lives, mitigate risk and maintain their sexual health. The review identified factors which are conducive to sexual health risks and vulnerability, including incomplete knowledge about STIs and safer sexual practices; gossip and ridicule concerning sexual activity and its consequences; damaging expectations about male prerogatives with respect to sexual relationships; limited inter-generational communication about sexual health issues; inadequate school-based sexual health education; and tensions between Indigenous and biomedical explanations of sexual health issues. Future research priorities include a focus on young Indigenous people in cities and towns across Australia, and in regional and remote settings in New South Wales and Victoria; understanding how Indigenous cultural values support young people’s sexual health; young men’s sexual and service-based practices; and the experiences of same-sex attracted and gender diverse youth. This research would inform the design and delivery of culturally safe and acceptable sexual health services and programmes, underpinned by an understanding of factors in young Indigenous Australians’ everyday sexual lives.     

THE MEANING OF RACE TO EMPLOYERS:

The unemployment problems of blacks in the United States have been the subject of considerable research in the social sciences since the 1980s. One way of studying the barriers to employment faced by blacks has been to interview employers, face to face, and directly ask them about their racial attitudes. These studies have concluded that a majority of employers believe that blacks, compared with other racial and ethnic groups, are uncooperative, unreliable, and lack sufficient skills for entry-level employment. The present study critically reexamines employer racial attitudes toward blacks and other groups through a case study of employer hiring in the electronics industry in Los Angeles. Using a different set of interview questions, employers reported (1) that blacks are reluctant to accept unskilled jobs due to a higher reservation wage, not because they lacked skills or a work ethic, (2) that employer racial attitudes varied by level of occupational skill, and (3) that affirmative action regulations modified the hiring process such that employers were less likely to rely on negative racial stereotypes in their hiring and more likely to rely on objective criteria when screening job seekers. I conclude by suggesting that employer racial attitudes are dynamic and, in large measure, shaped by institutional relationships within the workplace.     

Number of sexual partners and sexual assertiveness predict sexual victimization: do more partners equal more risk?

In previous studies, number of sexual partners and sexual assertiveness were examined as independent risk factors for sexual victimization among college women. Using a sample of 335 college women, this study examined the interaction of number of sexual partners and sexual assertiveness on verbal sexual coercion and rape. Approximately 32% of the sample reported unwanted sexual intercourse, 6.9% (n = 23) experienced verbal sexual coercion, 17.9% (n = 60) experienced rape, and 7.2% (n = 24) experienced both. As number of sexual partners increased, instances of verbal sexual coercion increased for women low in relational sexual assertiveness but not for women high in relational sexual assertiveness. A similar relationship was not found for rape. Among women who experienced both verbal sexual coercion and rape, increases in number of partners in the context of low refusal and relational assertiveness were associated with increases in verbal sexual coercion and rape. Findings suggest sexual assertiveness is related to fewer experiences of sexual coercion.     

Research Knowledge Assessment: A Study of MSW Students’ Acquisition and Retention of Research Knowledge

ABSTRACT

In response to the need for meaningful data about student learning in research courses, we developed and implemented the Research Knowledge Assessment instrument to measure MSW student acquisition, application, and retention of research knowledge over a 3-year period across the research curriculum. Initial findings indicated that students entered the foundation research methods course with little research knowledge, gained some knowledge during the course but not at an acceptable level, and lost 22% of the gain by the beginning of the concentration research course. The greatest knowledge acquisition was in sampling and the least in theory and question development. Knowledge acquisition was associated with not having a BSW and not having adjunct faculty as a research instructor.