Predicting adoption dissolutions for children involved in the child welfare system

While the majority of foster care adoptions are stable and secure, some dissolve, resulting in the return of children to the system. The purpose of this study was to identify factors associated with children’s reentry into the foster care system after adoptions are formally finalized. Using case records from the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services’ (DCFS) Bureau of Information Systems (BIS), we compared 123 dissolved adoptions to 74 successful ones. We found that children’s gender, history of physical abuse, exposure to drug use, and the number of foster care placements prior to adoption are associated with greater odds of dissolution. Furthermore, the odds of dissolution were higher for relative adoptive parents and for adoptive parents with prior substantiated Child Welfare cases. Implications for practice include ongoing targeted training and supportive services for families and improved screening procedures that address the unique needs of adoptive parents.     

Heterogeneity in treatment effects across diverse populations

Differences in patient characteristics, including age, sex, and race influence the safety and effectiveness of drugs, biologic products, and medical devices. Here we provide a summary of the topics discussed during the opening panel at the 2018 Johns Hopkins Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation symposium on Assessing and Communicating Heterogeneity of Treatment Effects for Patient Subpopulations: Challenges and Opportunities. The goal of this session was to provide a brief overview of FDA-regulated therapeutics, including drugs, biologics and medical devices, and some of the major sources of heterogeneity of treatment effects (HTE) related to patient demographics, such as age, sex and race. The panel discussed the US Food and Drug Administration's role in reviewing and regulating drugs, devices, and biologic products and the challenges associated with ensuring that diverse patient populations benefit from these therapeutics. Ultimately, ensuring diverse demographic inclusion in clinical trials, and designing basic and clinical research studies to account for the intended patient population's age, sex, race, and genetic factors among other characteristics, will lead to better, safer therapies for diverse patient populations.     

Review essay: Abolition and its aftermath

Abolition and its Aftermath: The Historical Context 1790–1916. D. Richardson (ed.). London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1985. ix, 179pp.

Out of Slavery: Abolition and After 1833–1983. J. Hayward (ed.). London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 1985. xiii, 200pp.     

Engendering Whiteness White Women and Colonialism in Barbados and North Carolina, 1627-1865

Author: GARNSEY, PETER; Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine; Reviewer: Niall Mc Keown; Author: JOHNSON, WALTER; Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market; Reviewer: Richard Follett; Author: GLAUDE, EDDIE S., JR.; Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America; Reviewer: Chris Dixon; Author: HADDEN, SALLY E.; Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas; Reviewer: Tim Lockley; Editors: CIMBALA, PAUL A. and MILLER, RANDALL M.; The Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations; Reviewer: S.-M. Grant; Author: SHELLER, MIMI; Democracy After Slavery: Black Publics and Peasant Radicalism in Haiti and Jamaica; Reviewer: Diana Paton     

Grandparental childcare in Australia: gender differences in the correlates of providing regular grandparental care while parents work

Grandparents’ regular care for children while parents work has been mostly studied from the parental perspective. This paper focuses on the grandparents. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 2006 (N = 7672) we investigate regular-caring grandparents’ demographic characteristics, which childcare activities they undertake, and how regular childcare provision relates to their time in other activities, subjective time pressure and satisfaction. Results indicate the correlates and nature of regular care differ by gender. Regular and non-regular-caring grandmothers’ relative time allocation to different childcare tasks barely differs, while regular-caring grandfathers’ care includes a much higher proportion of active care and travel than non-regular-caring grandfathers’. Regular care provision is associated with less leisure than non-regular-caring counterparts for both genders, but with only grandmothers’ housework, personal care and sleep time. Providing regular care doubles the likelihood of grandmothers reporting high subjective time pressure compared to non-regular-caring grandmothers; there is no association between regular care and time pressure for grandfathers. We conclude that in taking on regular care, grandparents echo the gender patterns found among parents, namely that it is women who are disproportionately impacted by meeting family care needs.     

Urban and agricultural soils: conflicts and trade-offs in the optimization of ecosystem services

On-going human population growth and changing patterns of resource consumption are increasing global demand for ecosystem services, many of which are provided by soils. Some of these ecosystem services are linearly related to the surface area of pervious soil, whereas others show non-linear relationships, making ecosystem service optimization a complex task. As limited land availability creates conflicting demands among various types of land use, a central challenge is how to weigh these conflicting interests and how to achieve the best solutions possible from a perspective of sustainable societal development. These conflicting interests become most apparent in soils that are the most heavily used by humans for specific purposes: urban soils used for green spaces, housing, and other infrastructure and agricultural soils for producing food, fibres and biofuels. We argue that, despite their seemingly divergent uses of land, agricultural and urban soils share common features with regards to interactions between ecosystem services, and that the trade-offs associated with decision-making, while scale- and context-dependent, can be surprisingly similar between the two systems. We propose that the trade-offs within land use types and their soil-related ecosystems services are often disproportional, and quantifying these will enable ecologists and soil scientists to help policy makers optimizing management decisions when confronted with demands for multiple services under limited land availability.     

HIV testing,perceptions of AIDS risk,and condom use motivation among US women

As STD infections including HIV increase in the United States, it has become increasingly important to policy makers to ascertain the extent to which knowledge and perceptions of AIDS risk affect an individual's probability of altering their sexual or contraceptive behavior to avoid infection. This paper examines the extent to which women's perceptions of their own and their partners' risk of HIV infection affects the probability of using a condom for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. This paper also examines the extent to which HIV testing may affect motivation for condom use. Crosstabulations reveal that prophylactic condom use is more prevalent among women who have been tested for HIV and increase as perceptions of their chance (and their partner's chance) of being positive increases. The multivariate results from this study indicate that having an HIV test significantly predicts the likelihood of using a condom for STD prevention for US women. Furthermore, women who perceive themselves to be at least somewhat likely to be HIV positive have a higher probability of using a condom to prevent sexually transmitted disease, and women who perceive their partners to be HIV positive are twice as likely as other women to use a condom for STD prevention. However, women who consider themselves likely to be HIV positive are no more likely to use a condom than those who consider themselves not at risk.     

Risk,interest groups and the definition of crisis: the case of volcanic ash

This paper considers a key aspect of the ‘risk society’ thesis: the belief that we should be able to manage risks and control the world around us. In particular it focuses on the interface between risk and risk events as socially constructed and the insights that ‘critical situations’ give us into ‘the routine and mundane’, the otherwise taken for granted assumptions underlying risk regulation. It does this with reference to the events precipitated by the April 2010 volcanic eruption in the Eyjafjallajökull area of Iceland. The resulting cloud of volcanic ash spread across Europe and much of Europe's airspace was closed to civil aviation for six days, with far reaching consequences including huge financial losses for airlines. The social processes of defining and reacting to risk and crisis both reveal and generate dilemmas and challenges in regulation. This paper examines the role of different interest groups in defining risk expectations and thereby redefining the ash crisis as a regulatory crisis.     

Patterns of individual change and program satisfaction in a positive parenting program for parents at psychosocial risk

Despite the evidence of effectiveness of positive parenting programs, little is known about the typology of changes that parents at psychosocial risk undergo after an intervention. We compared individual patterns of change in three parenting outcomes in 256 at risk parents with young children attending the group‐based Growing Up Happily in the Family program delivered in municipal social services. We identified four clusters of individual change: Cluster 1 (30.6%) had negative changes in parental child‐rearing attitudes and parenting stress, Cluster 2 (27.7%) had positive changes in child‐rearing attitudes and negative results in parental perceived competence, and Cluster 3 (24.1%) and Cluster 4 (17.6%) showed overall better results. Residential area, type of social support, and quality of implementation characterized cluster membership. Participants in clusters with better results were more satisfied with the program than those with worse results. Practical recommendations are provided for the successful implementation of group parenting programs in family preservation services.