Child sexual abuse suspicions: treatment considerations during investigation

This article addresses what, if any, psychotherapeutic interventions should be provided to meet the emotional and clinical needs of alleged child victims of sexual abuse while they await judicial determinations from the family, dependency, or criminal courts. The discussion emphasizes that to minimize iatrogenic outcomes, professionals involved in sexual abuse allegation cases should carefully establish and maintain professional role boundaries and take on only one role in a case. Professional roles may include an investigative forensic interviewer, court appointed forensic evaluator, and therapist. Special attention is given to complex issues that arise in child custody cases with allegations of child sexual abuse in family court.     

Risk Communication in The Netherlands: The Monitored Introduction of the EC "Post-Seveso" Directive

Implementation of article 8.1 of the EC-"Seveso" Directive (82/501/EC) is now under way in many countries in Europe. In The Netherlands, the implementation of the Directive started with a carefully monitored introduction of active information provision at two sites (Dordrecht and Elst). This introduction was supported by a multidisciplinary research group. This group helped to develop the risk communication program and also played a role in the evaluation of the program. This paper describes these processes and their evaluation. We will focus on the design of the risk communication programs and the effects of the programs on knowledge and attitudes of the local target groups. This effort and its results clearly started an institutional learning process involving governmental bodies at several organizational levels (local, regional, and national), and industrial organizations (individual firms and organizations of industries). Monitoring the design, the implementation, and the effects of active information provision proves an effective means to gain experience with the implementation of the Seveso Directive and could help to facilitate further implementation.     

Do Workplace Gender Transitions Make Gender Trouble?

This article examines what happens when an employee makes the transition from one recognized gender category to another and remains in the same job. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with transmen and transwomen in Texas and California, we illustrate how a new social gender identity is interactionally achieved in these open workplace transitions. While transgender people often are represented as purposefully adopting hyper‐feminine or masculine gender identities post‐transition, we find that our respondents strive to craft alternative femininities and masculinities. However, regardless of their personal gender ideologies, their men and women co‐workers often enlist their transitioning colleague into gender rituals designed to repatriate them into a rigid gender binary. This enlistment limits the political possibilities of making gender trouble in the workplace, as transgender people have little leeway for resistance if they wish to maintain job security and friendly workplace relationships.     

“Now that we can ask and tell: The social movement legacy of the DADT repeal”

The 2010 Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Act, along with the 2016 DOD announcement regarding the impending inclusion of transgender soldiers, created the possibility of open and unsanctioned military service for LGBTQs for the first time in US history. This article provides an overview of how these policy changes came about, from the emergence of DADT to the legal and activist challenges to its legitimacy, including its ultimate repeal and the subsequent move to extend open service to transgender people. After summarizing what we know so far about how the repeal has (and has not) changed the experience of service for LGBTQs, I consider how these policy changes have been received and interpreted by LGBTQ activists and scholars. Open military service is either viewed as one of the most exciting or the most damning developments of LGBTQ organizing in the 21st century, according to the two most prominent activist perspectives. This review outlines the key arguments of each perspective and concludes by considering the value of reconciling these disparate vantage points when analyzing the future of LGBTQ social movement strategy.     

First Things First: a framework for successful secondary school reform

If youth development initiatives are going to focus on outcomes that we know are important in settings that we know can change these outcomes, the first outcomes should be educational, and the first setting should be school. School reform presents the most feasible, defensible, and informed opportunity for public policy to improve the life chances of children and youth in disadvantaged communities. This chapter introduces First Things First (FTF), a school reform framework grounded in research about how young people develop and how schools promote students' engagement and learning. The chapter explores four critical features of FTF that focus on students: (1) continuity of care; (2) increased instructional time; (3) high, clear, and fair standards; and (4) enriched opportunities for students. The critical features of FTF are implemented through three strategies: small learning communities, a family advocate system, and instructional improvement.     

Innovation in education: Technological economics

Technological change and innovation are vital parts of the economy. This paper concerns one particular attempt to study both the process of innovation itself and possible means of increasing its effectiveness: Technological Economics. Barriers to innovation, intellectual and organizational, are described from the experience at the University of Stirling.     

The core variables of symbolic-experiential therapy: a qualitative study

Symbolic-experiential therapists have been criticized for not adequately operationalizing symbolic theory and empirically validating their methods. Although pioneering researchers have noted that the task of studying and evaluating humanistic therapies is complex, we agree that all therapists need to be held accountable for their interventions. In this article we identify the core variables underlying symbolic-experiential therapy that emerged from a research study using grounded theory. The inductively derived conceptual framework for symbolic-experiential therapy included: (a) Generating an interpersonal set; (b) creating a suprasystem; (c) stimulating a symbolic context; (d) activating stress within the system; (e) creating symbolic experience; and (f) moving out of the system.