Social work with Bosnian Muslim refugee children and families: a review of the literature

More than two million Bosnian Muslims were ethnically cleansed in the Balkan region; of these, 200,000 were killed while the others were forced to flee their homes and become refugees. This article focuses on the influence of societal and cultural values coupled with wartime experiences on the transition of Bosnian refugee families to their new countries. Consideration is given to culturally competent theoretical frameworks and practice principles social workers can use to assist Bosnian Muslim children and families in their adaptation process within their resettlement communities.     

Becoming a Marriage, Family and Child Counselor: Notes from a Chicano

Becoming a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Counselor (MFCC) in California is presented from a Chicano's perspective based on the author's own training. He reports that 1) there is a need for Chicanos trained extensively in marriage and family counseling to serve the large Mexican American population; 2) MFCC is a growing profession yet few Chicanos are entering it; 3) few Chicano professionals are involved in the training, teaching and supervision of marriage and family counselors; and 4) the state licensing board and the two marriage and family counselors' associations do not identify minority counselors nor those who provide Spanish speaking services .     

How IKEA turned a crisis into an opportunity

In 2013–2014, the IKEA cuddle toy Lufsig was connoted as a symbol of the Chief Executive (CE) of Hong Kong, prompting stakeholders to make negative associations with the corporation. Our study examines how IKEA mediated communication on traditional media and social media to turn this crisis into an opportunity. This study informs corporate communicators and researchers about the integrated utilization of crisis response strategies in a sophisticated crisis situation.     

Deconstructing Gender Differences in Experienced Well-Being Among Older Adults in the Developing World: The Roles of Time Use and Activity-Specific Affective Experiences

Social Indicators Research - Due to declining fertility rates and increasing longevity, the world is growing older. Improving the quality of life of older adults, and not merely preventing deaths,...     

Evidence-based practice with families of chronically ill children: a critical literature review

A chronically ill child is financially, emotionally, and physically demanding on the family system. Although researchers have identified a plethora of risks, stressors, and needs of the families with a chronically ill child, there is a scarceness of evidence-based interventions in the existing literature. The purpose of the authors in this study was to critically analyze current treatment and identify the gaps in the available research. Findings revealed that there is a lack of support for empirically tested interventions that can help parents, siblings, and families of chronically ill children. The issues raised within this literature review bring attention to the need for shifts in research from exploratory to evidence based in order to successfully achieve more effective care.     

Racialized Tokens: Latina Teachers Negotiating,Surviving and Thriving in a White Woman’s Profession

Previous scholarship on tokenism in professional occupations analyzes the ways white men exclude white women in male-dominated jobs. This study provides a glimpse of one organization, elementary schools, where white women exclude Latina women in a feminized occupation. Drawing on multiple methodologies, this paper analyzes Latina teachers’ workplace experiences in Santa Ana, a Southern California Mexican immigrant city. The article compares the experiences of Latina teachers working at one school where over 70% of teachers are of Latina origin and three schools where 20% of teachers are Latinas. The author coins the term ‘racialized tokens’ to illustrate how the inextricable link of race, gender and class combine to shape the workplace experiences of Latina teachers who work as numerical minorities among a majority of white colleagues. Since Latina teachers are ‘racialized tokens’ in these spaces, the author argues that in the presumably post-racial era of diversity and multiculturalism in the U.S., Latina teachers do not long for racial integration with white women in their workplaces, rather, they choose to self-segregate because of the comfort and safety self-segregation provides.     

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on First Nations Child Welfare: Why if Canada wins, equality and justice lose

Repeated reports indicate that First Nations children on reserve receive less child welfare funding than other children in Canada despite the fact that First Nations children have higher child welfare needs. After the Government of Canada failed to implement two joint solutions to address the inequality, First Nations organizations in Canada filed a human rights complaint alleging that the Government of Canada is discriminating against First Nations children on the basis of race and national ethnic origin. This historic case is now before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and marks the first time that Canada has been held to account before a legal body for its current treatment of First Nations children and their families. This opinion article presents the facts leading up to the filing of the human rights case, the grass roots advocacy and legal processes after the complaint was filed, and the implications for: First Nations children, individuals from minority groups, and the moral fabric of the country if the Government of Canada wins the case.     

Inequities in Higher Education: Issues and Promising Practices in a World Ambivalent about Affirmative Action

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the legality of race-based affirmative action at universities in 2003. Although the decisions affirmed the legality of considering race in college admissions decisions, their long-term effects are not entirely clear. They neither resolved conflicts nor solved problems affirmative action was intended to address, namely, disparities in educational outcomes between Whites and ethnic/racial minorities. Although disparities have diminished since 1965, policies and practices to sustain and further increase diversity in higher education without affirmative action are needed. This article provides historical and conceptual grounding for this JSI issue, which examines approaches for attaining campus diversity. Collectively, the issue provides approaches for increasing diversity as well as strategies for managing and benefiting from diversity in postsecondary environments.     

Decomposing Bayesian networks: triangulation of the moral graph with genetic algorithms

In this paper we consider the optimal decomposition of Bayesian networks. More concretely, we examine empirically the applicability of genetic algorithms to the problem of the triangulation of moral graphs. This problem constitutes the only difficult step in the evidence propagation algorithm of Lauritzen and Spiegelhalter (1988) and is known to be NP-hard (Wen, 1991). We carry out experiments with distinct crossover and mutation operators and with different population sizes, mutation rates and selection biasses. The results are analysed statistically. They turn out to improve the results obtained with most other known triangulation methods (Kjærulff, 1990) and are comparable to results obtained with simulated annealing (Kjærulff, 1990; Kjærulff, 1992).