Who Gets Custody Now? Dramatic Changes in Children’s Living Arrangements After Divorce

This article reexamines the living arrangements of children following their parents’ divorce, using Wisconsin Court Records, updating an analysis that showed relatively small but significant increases in shared custody in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These changes have accelerated markedly in the intervening years: between 1988 and 2008, the proportion of mothers granted sole physical custody fell substantially, the proportion of parents sharing custody increased dramatically, and father–sole custody remained relatively stable. We explore changes in the correlates of alternative custody outcomes, showing that some results from the earlier analysis still hold (for example, cases with higher total family income are more likely to have shared custody), but other differences have lessened (shared-custody cases have become less distinctive as they have become more common). Despite the considerable changes in marriage and divorce patterns over this period, we do not find strong evidence that the changes in custody are related to changes in the characteristics of families experiencing a divorce; rather, changes in custody may be the result of changes in social norms and the process by which custody is determined.     

Connecting Tenure Security with Durable Solutions to Internal Displacement: From Restitution of Property Rights to the Right to Adequate Housing

The end of displacement is a main goal of international peacebuilding strategies, with increasing financial and human resources committed to it. Nevertheless, protracted internal displacement remains unabated, necessitating a review of the responses provided thus far. Durable solutions to internal displacement require a safe, permanent and secure place to settle, which puts security of tenure at the centre of any sustainable option. This article emphasizes the limited understanding of the factors that contribute to secure tenure as one of the main flaws in a predominantly legal approach to the right to restitution and the right to adequate housing in responses to internal displacement. It calls for the design of contextualized and inclusive strategies to align the de jure, de facto and perception dimensions of tenure security to support the sustainable settlement of internally displaced persons as well as the construction of peace.     

Safety as a Fifth Dimension in Supervision: Stories from the Frontline

Child and family practice is recognised as a field of social work that has become increasingly complex. While evidence is growing in relation to effective supervision, there has been little research about the attributes of an effective supervisor, or the components of effective supervision. This paper reports on research undertaken in Victoria, Australia, which explored practitioners’ and supervisors’ experiences of effective supervision in this field. Data collection involved in-depth interviews with experienced supervisors and supervisees in order to explore the concept of effective supervision from participants’ perspectives. The data were systematically interrogated using a thematic inductive process, designed to enhance the voice of participants in the research. The study findings confirmed the complexity and centrality of the supervisory relationship, with the experience of a safe supervisory relationship proving essential. The importance of contemporary knowledge, leadership skills, and an enabling organisational and community context were also highlighted.     

‘It's afforded us a huge flexibility’: the impact of ‘Disabled Children's Access to Childcare Pilots’ on families with a disabled child in England

For many parents of disabled children, finding affordable and suitable childcare that meets their needs is very challenging. Research in the UK has shown that parents with disabled children experience barriers not just with cost, but also accessibility, the attitudes of childcare providers and in getting good information about sources of childcare. The Disabled Children's Access to Childcare (DCATCH) pilots was an initiative designed to improve access to childcare for disabled children in England. As part of an evaluation of DCATCH, qualitative interviews were carried out with 38 members of 22 families who had received support from the initiative. All of the families reported positive outcomes and highlighted: a beneficial impact on the parents' capacity to work; enjoyable experiences for the disabled child; increased confidence and independence for both parents and children; and the creation of time for parents to pursue other activities. The results of the DCATCH initiative support other research which argues that whilst cost is a significant factor around childcare choices for families with a disabled child, having confidence in the childcare provider's ability to meet specific needs (including complex health care needs) and providing positive experiences for the disabled child are also key, determining factors.     

Graphical and Numerical Methods for Detecting Influential Observations in Complex Bingham Data

We describe methods to detect influential observations in a sample of pre-shapes when the underlying distribution is assumed to be complex Bingham. One of these methods is based on Cook's distance, which is derived from the likelihood of the complex Bingham distribution. Other method is related to the tangent space, which is based on the local influence for the multivariate normal distribution. A method to detect outliers is also explained. The application of the methods is illustrated in both a real dataset and a simulated sample.     

Childless Elders in Assisted Living: Findings from the Maryland Assisted Living Study

We compared data drawn from a random sample of 399 current assisted living residents and a subsample of 222 newly admitted residents for two groups: childless residents and residents with children. The percentage of childless residents (26%) in our study was slightly higher than U.S. population estimates of childless individuals aged 65 years and older (20%). In the overall sample, the two groups differed significantly by age, race, and women's years of education. The childless group was slightly younger, had a higher percentage of African American residents, and had more years of education than the group with children. In the subsample, we looked at demographic, functional, financial, and social characteristics and found that childless residents reported fewer diagnoses of dementia and fewer visits from a relative but more reported paying less money per month for assisted living and having private insurance than residents with children. As childlessness among older adults continues to increase, it will become increasingly important to understand how child status affects the need for and experience of long-term care.     

Asymptotic relative efficiency of wald tests in measurement error models

In this paper, asymptotic relative efficiency (ARE) of Wald tests for the Tweedie class of models with log-linear mean, is considered when the aux¬iliary variable is measured with error. Wald test statistics based on the naive maximum likelihood estimator and on a consistent estimator which is obtained by using Nakarnura's (1990) corrected score function approach are defined. As shown analytically, the Wald statistics based on the naive and corrected score function estimators are asymptotically equivalents in terms of ARE. On the other hand, the asymptotic relative efficiency of the naive and corrected Wald statistic with respect to the Wald statistic based on the true covariate equals to the square of the correlation between the unobserved and the observed co-variate. A small scale numerical Monte Carlo study and an example illustrate the small sample size situation.     

Characteristics of children in residential treatment in New York State

This study addresses three questions about the population of children and families served in the highest level of care in the child welfare system in New York State residential treatment centers (RTCs): (1) How prevalent are emotional and behavioral problems in the youth entering RTCs? (2) Has the proportion of youth with such problems increased compared to 10 years ago? (3) Are there identifiable subgroups of youth entering RTCs? One-fourth of RTC admissions in fiscal year 2001 were randomly selected from a representative sample of 16 RTCs. The study completed a standardized data collection instrument based on a review of agency records, and included information that was known at the time each child was admitted. The results show significant increases compared to t10 years earlier in the proportion of youth with mental health problems and juvenile justice backgrounds. The findings suggest that youth who traditionally have been served by other systems of care are now being served in the child welfare system. The increased treatment needs of these youth and the heterogeneity of the RTC population have important implications for policies, programs, and practice.     

Well balanced: 8 steps to wellness for adults with mental illness and diabetes

Serious mental illness places a tremendous burden on clients, their families, and behavioral and medical health care providers. The co-occurrence of diabetes with mental illness may further compromise daily functioning. Psychiatric nurses can make a significant difference in improving the health and medical outcomes of this client population. A partnership was developed between the University of Rochester School of Nursing and the Western New York Care Coordination Program to evaluate a novel nursing model for adults with both serious mental illness and diabetes mellitus. The Well Balanced program incorporated health promotion, disease management, nursing care management, and evidence-based practice guidelines into 8 Steps to Wellness for a community-based mental health population. During a 16-visit intervention period, psychiatric nurses interacted with 74 clients. As a result of the program, clients experienced improvements in health risk status and in their hemoglobin A1C and reported high satisfaction with the Well Balanced program.