Residential care: an effective response to out‐of‐home children and young people?

The ever‐growing number of out‐of‐home children in Italy over the last decade has urged an assessment of the available care services. Although foster care is spreading rapidly, many young people are still housed in residential facilities. Reflection on residential care quality has intensified at both a national and an international level. This paper presents the results of a study on residential care facilities for children and young people in the region of Northern Italy (Lombardy). Four dimensions of ‘quality’ are considered: efficiency, effectiveness, participation in planning and intervention, and empowerment of children and their family relationships. The combined effects of these dimensions are defined as ‘relational quality’. The results show that residential care facilities are generally good, while Social Services resources often appear inadequate for interventions aimed at birth families (efficiency). The well‐being of children in residential care facilities is high, even if they tend to move from one facility to another, rarely returning to their birth family (effectiveness). The involvement of children and their families at different stages of the care path is limited (participative approach). Finally, the most critical element is the failure to properly involve birth families (empowerment).     

Free triples,large indifference classes and the majority rule

We study classes of voting situations where agents may exhibit a systematic inability to distinguish between the elements of certain sets of alternatives. These sets of alternatives may differ from voter to voter, thus resulting in personalized families of preferences. We study the properties of the majority relation when defined on restricted domains that are the cartesian product of preference families, each one reflecting the corresponding agent’s objective indifferences, and otherwise allowing for all possible (strict) preference relations among alternatives. We present necessary and sufficient conditions on the preference domains of this type, guaranteeing that majority rule is quasi-transitive and thus the existence of Condorcet winners at any profile in the domain, and for any finite subset of alternatives. Finally, we compare our proposed restrictions with others in the literature, to conclude that they are independent of any previously discussed domain restriction.     

A new axiomatic foundation of partial comparability

The paper presents some results obtained in searching for a new axiomatic foundation for partial comparability (PC) in the frame of non-conventional preference modeling. The basic idea is to define an extended preference structure able to represent lack of information, uncertainty, ambiguity, multidimensional and conflicting preferences, using formal logic as the basic formalism.A four-valued paraconsistent logic is therefore described in the paper as a more suitable language for the purposes of the research. The concepts of partition, general binary relations properties, fundamental relational system of preferences (f.r.s.p.), maximal f.r.s.p. and well founded f.r.s.p. are then introduced and some theorems are demonstrated in order to provide the axiomatic foundation of PC. The main result obtained is a preference structure that is a maximal well founded f.r.s.p. This preference structure facilitates a more flexible, reliable and robust preference modeling. Moreover it can be viewed as a generalization of the conventional approach, so that all the results obtained until now can be used under it.Two examples are provided at the end of the paper in order to give an account of the operational potentialities of the new theory, mainly in the area of multicriteria decision aid and social choice theory. Further research directions conclude the paper.This research has been done while the first author was in the Université Libre de Bruxelles under the Research in Brussels actions.     

Attachment and adaptive skills in children of international adoption

The attachment pattern of a sample of 168 internationally adopted children was explored in this study using the semi‐structured Friends and Family Interview. The pattern was analysed in relation to the development of adaptive skills as an expression of the children's resilience. The secure attachment pattern rates were slightly lower and the insecure attachment patterns were considerably higher than those of normative samples from the previous studies. The children from Eastern Europe demonstrated a more insecure attachment pattern (odds ratio [OR]= 2.46; confidence interval [CI]= 1.23–3.94), and their scores on the adaptive skills scales were lower than the scores of children from other countries (OR = 2.62; 95% CI = 1.02–6.72). These results help to identify the groups at risk of failing to develop secure attachment patterns and appropriate adaptive skills, and should provide valuable information for designing effective interventions.     

Spurious Instrumental Variables

Spurious regression phenomenon has been recognized for a wide range of Data Generating Processes: driftless unit roots, unit roots with drift, long memory, trend and broken-trend stationarity, etc. The usual framework is Ordinary Least Squares. We show that the spurious phenomenon also occurs in Instrumental Variables estimation when using non stationary variables, whether the non stationarity component is stochastic or deterministic. Finite sample evidence supports the asymptotic results.     

A geostatistical approach to define guidelines for radon prone area identification

Radon is a natural radioactive gas known to be the main contributor to natural background radiation exposure and the major leading cause of lung cancer second to smoking. Indoor radon concentration levels of 200 and 400 Bq/m³ are reference values suggested by the 90/143/Euratom recommendation, above which mitigation measures should be taken in new and old buildings, respectively, to reduce exposure to radon. Despite this international recommendation, Italy still does not have mandatory regulations or guidelines to deal with radon in dwellings. Monitoring surveys have been undertaken in a number of western European countries in order to assess the exposure of people to this radioactive gas and to identify radon prone areas. However, such campaigns provide concentration values in each single dwelling included in the sample, while it is often necessary to provide measures of the pollutant concentration which refer to sub-areas of the region under study. This requires a realignment of the spatial data from the level at which they are collected (points) to the level at which they are necessary (areas). This is known as change of support problem.In this paper, we propose a methodology based on geostatistical simulations in order to solve this problem and to identify radon prone areas which may be suggested for national guidelines.     

School-to-work transitions in times of crisis: the case of Spanish youth without qualifications

This article focuses on the school-to-work transitions of Spanish youth. Herein, we study the pathways followed during a 10-year period by young people who dropped out of school without achieving any qualifications and who did not achieve any at a later date. This is a population aged 26–28 years old with an educational level of ISCED 0–1. The study adopts a plurimethodological approach that includes an initial qualitative phase whose main instrument was the biographical interview and a second phase with a quantitative focus in which data were collected using a questionnaire. The results show the effect of dropping out of education without qualifications on the pathways of the youths as well as their greater vulnerability in the current period of economic crisis, which results in a high percentage of the population that has no employment, education or training. This effect is even greater among women. This study highlights the difficulties associated to returning to education, the reproduction of educational exclusion in the population that did not obtain the diploma corresponding to compulsory secondary education, and a lack of public policies to support this specific population.     

Diversity,civic virtues and ecological austerity

A single global culture and a unique set of world institutional arrangements, based on an ever-increasing consumption of natural resources and environmental pollution is not sustainable nor can be sustained. In this paper some key ideological and moral com­ponents of the urgently required changes towards a culture of sustainability are examined, together with the implications, difficulties and requirements for its embodiment both in individual practices and in social institutions. In particular, it is argued that the values and attitudes which promote the protection and integration of diversity—both cultural and biological—and restrain the current trends in natural resource consumption and environmental pollution are to be developed by the citizenry if global societies are to survive. In the domains of political participation, rational dialogue and civic virtue, sustainability is akin to the inherited republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. Sustainability must now become an indispensable fourth moral pillar in the structuration of society and, in particular, in the coming world republican polity, which will necessarily take account of the diversity of cultures and institutions. It is shown that, otherwise, the now developing unsustainable global society would otherwise cease to exist.