Strengthening Supervision in Systems of Care: Exemplary Practices in Empirically Supported Treatments

The last few decades have witnessed major growth in the evidence base on effective client interventions used by social workers and other health and social service professionals. As the pressure for service agencies to offer empirically supported treatments has been increasing, financial and time constraints have driven a decline in the frequency and amount of supervision provided within many of these organizations. While the reduction in staff supervision presents a challenge for effective implementation of all treatments, there are comprehensive empirically supported treatment models for clients that serve as exemplars of supervisory practice through their explicit requirements, processes and tools for supervision and supervisor development. After a review of the current status of supervision nationally, an implementation science-based approach is described, which builds organizational support for supervision and promotes optimal supervisory practice through training and consultation of supervisors and supervisees. The elements of this comprehensive approach, developed by the Yale Program on Supervision, are detailed. Supervisory policies, practices, and tools created by the developers of empirically supported treatments and similarly grounded in the principles of implementation science are offered as further examples of strategies for ensuring effective supervision.     

Mentoring or Monitoring: Formulating a Balance in Systemic Supervision

Contemporary supervision practice has increasingly involved tasks previously associated with line management; this has been uncomfortable and unresolved for both supervisors and supervisees. Context, individual preference and circumstance can drive the relationship more into surveillance or more into support, and each will have important implications for practice. This article argues for a balance between monitoring and mentoring, both are crucial for effective supervision to occur. Supervisors need to know the boundaries of their delegated task, given that supervision can be the intervention of choice for any number of organizational difficulties. However they also need to integrate the leadership and critical appraisal tasks required, commencing supervision relationships with these components being transparent and clear, such that all participants can meet their obligations to practice competently, ethically and in the clients' interests. The systemic model provides an effective framework to conceptualise and intervene in relation to the various stakeholders, relationships, service systems and political context in which arrangements for supervision are negotiated.     

The Decision to Remain in an Involuntarily Celibate Relationship

Based upon qualitative data from a sample of 77 married or long‐term cohabiting heterosexuals self‐defining as involuntarily celibate, we used social exchange theory to develop a model for understanding the causes and consequences of sexual inactivity in committed relationships. Although reported consequences of involuntary celibacy tended to be negative, most partnered celibates were in stable relationships and reluctant to leave. As a result, they developed diverse coping strategies, and most were still hopeful of resuming sexual activity. Based upon these findings, the paper concludes with a discussion of practical implications and directions for further research.     

Une analyse en termes d'équilibre de l'écart salarial entre hommes et femmes

Partant de l'hypothèse selon laquelle les apports en travail domestique des hommes et des femmes sont complémentaires, les auteures vérifient l'existence d'équilibres multiples. Dans certains cas, le travail est réparti àégalité et les salaires sont identiques. Dans d'autres, la répartition est différente, de même que les salaires. Dans ce contexte, les stéréotypes relatifs à l'infériorité de la productivité des femmes se révèlent autoréalisateurs. Partant d'exemples numériques, les auteures montrent que le bien‐être est supérieur lorsque le couple répartit le travail à part égale, puis elles énoncent des recommandations politiques.     

Emotions in a Rational Profession: The Gendering of Skills in ICT Work

Information communication technology (ICT) work is rarely seen as a work environment where emotional and social skills are key. However, the ideal ICT worker is increasingly said to possess a range of emotional and social skills that are often associated with femininity. This raises the question of how skills are discursively gendered in ICT work. This article firstly shows which skills ICT workers identify as those needed by the ideal ICT worker. Secondly, it highlights how ICT workers construct their own skills. Thirdly, some light is shed on how the gendering of emotional and social skills shifts with different discursive contexts and it is shown what the implications of this are. It is suggested that there is a dynamic at work through which men can appear as a new ideal ICT worker with more ease than women, despite the fact that women are more often associated with social and emotional skills.     

Contributions of tourism to social inclusion of persons with disability

Tourism, although a relevant part of the modern lifestyle in economically more developed countries, is even in these countries not accessible to all, with particular barriers existing for persons with disabilities. These barriers are not only physical, but also internal, cultural and social. Tourism and leisure have revealed many benefits for individuals with a disability, enhancing personal development, quality of life, recovery and contribution to social inclusion. This article discusses the potential of tourism for people with disability and presents the results of an exploratory study undertaken in Portugal aiming at a better understanding of this market and its profile, desires and constraints experienced when participating in holidays and leisure activities. This information should contribute to the debate on the potential contributions of tourism to improving social inclusion of persons with disability, while simultaneously permitting tourism providers to better integrate this group in their clientele.     

Changing Leadership and Gender in Public Sector Organizations

The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which leadership at middle management level in the public realm is gendered. This is attempted largely through a consideration of academic literature, supported by some empirical findings from a research investigation into higher education and social work in Sweden and England and a review of literature that reveals varying types of leadership characterized as masculinist. Taking the position that context shapes social relationships and subject positions, and provides opportunities as well as constraints, we consider leadership in the public sector under the sway of new public management, framed by neo‐liberalism and the valorization of competition, self‐interested instrumentality, uncertainty and risk, operationalized in public sector organizations through performative regimes. It is argued that while some women and men are willing participants in the new regimes, others are antagonistic or ambivalent, finding themselves mired in neo‐bureaucratic processes of surveillance and control, often stuck in occupational cul‐de‐sacs. It is contended that neo‐liberalism and new public management are associated with masculinist forms of rationality that elevate individual winners and losers and divert attention from collective issues of gender. Rather than focus on gendered styles of leadership it is suggested that it is more important to look at their gendered performance and effects.