The juvenile sexual offender: Challenges to assessment for outpatient intervention

Assessment is the key in the outpatient treatment of the juvenile sexual offender, helping to distinguish cause and determine appropriate interventions. The structured assessment identifies issues regarding sexuality, power, control and the impact of sexual abuse upon the child victim and the juvenile offender. Providing a comprehensive view of the offender's past and present, it helps in the utilization of treatment techniques.     

Accessibility and clarity of state child welfare agency mission statements

The authors reviewed 40 mission statements guiding U.S. public child welfare practice for accessibility, clarity, and values. Nine of the 40 state-administered child welfare agencies had not posted their missions on the Web as of October 2002, and 30 mission statements required a 12th-grade or college reading level for easy comprehension. The mission statements most often expressed the goals, values, and processes of safety, permanence, well-being, family preservation, cultural competence, self-sufficiency, and partnership. Mission statements can be an important tool for improving child welfare outcomes by providing direction; therefore, agency administrators should consider how clear and accessible their state agency mission statements are.     

Children's Eyewitness Memory: A Modern History and Contemporary Commentary

This article provides a modern historical overview of child eyewitness research, as well as an evaluative commentary on the field, with special emphasis on children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility in child sexual abuse cases. Four historical periods are reviewed: the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s (to date). Examples of legal cases that inform scientific research are described, discussion of relevant laws is presented, and a review of selected studies is offered. It is concluded that although we have learned a great deal about children's eyewitness memory and suggestibility over the last few decades, simple answers are evasive and much more research is needed.     

The function space D([O, ∞)ρ, E)

The Skorokhod topology is extended to the function space D([0, ∞)ρ, E) of functions, from [0, ∞)ρ to a complete separable metric space E, which are “continuous from above with limits from below. Criteria for tightness are developed. The case in which E is a product space is considered, and conditions under which tightness may be proven componentwise are given. Various applications are studied, including a multidimensional version of Donsker's Theorem, and a functional Central Limit Theorem for a multitype Poisson cluster process.     

Children's Beliefs About Self‐disclosure to Friends Regarding Academic Achievement

Self‐disclosure to friends is a potentially useful way for children to pursue a range of desired goals. Here we examined reasoning about the appropriateness of disclosing one's own academic outcomes in a sample of 7‐, 9‐, 11‐, 13‐, and 15‐year‐old Chinese participants (N = 150). The valence of (1) the outcomes to be disclosed and (2) the corresponding outcomes for the potential audience for the disclosure was manipulated factorially, and participants judged whether disclosure was advisable and explained their responses. Disclosure was seen as more appropriate under valence‐matching conditions than valence‐mismatching conditions. How participants judged each type of disclosure under valence‐mismatching conditions varied as a function of participant age: As compared with younger participants, older participants considered disclosure of weak performance to a stronger performer more acceptable and disclosure of strong performance to a weaker performer less acceptable. These findings suggest that older children are more likely than younger children to appreciate that self‐disclosing positive performance outcomes can bring social costs, and that self‐disclosing negative performance outcomes can bring social benefits.     

Risky Sexual Behaviors and Pregnancy Outcomes in Young Adulthood Following Substantiated Childhood Maltreatment: Findings From a Prospective Birth Cohort Study

Childhood maltreatment is associated with a range of adverse mental and physical health outcomes, including increased rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) later in life. However, the impact on risky sexual behaviors and pregnancy outcomes has not been adequately studied. This is particularly true for physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. We examined associations between prospectively substantiated childhood maltreatment and reports of risky sexual behaviors by men and women, as well as selected pregnancy outcomes in women. We followed up 3,081 (45.7% female) participants from the Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy, a prospective Australian birth cohort study. Using logistic regression, we examined the association between substantiated childhood maltreatment from birth to 14 years, and self-reported risky sexual behaviors and youth pregnancy outcomes at the 21-year follow-up. In adjusted analyses, children who had experienced multiple childhood maltreatment exhibited more risky sexual behaviors than their nonmaltreated counterparts. In specific models, those exposed to each form of childhood maltreatment, independent of co-occurring forms of childhood maltreatment, had an increased likelihood of risky sexual behaviors, particularly an early sexual debut and, for women, youth pregnancy. Neglect was also associated with multiple sexual partners, and emotional abuse with higher rates of miscarriage. There was no difference between men and women in how different forms of childhood maltreatment predicted risky sexual behaviors in young adulthood. All forms of substantiated childhood maltreatment, including multiple substantiations, were associated with risky sexual behavior in both sexes as well as higher rates of youth pregnancy in women. Moreover, emotional abuse persistently predicted miscarriages in young adult women. Understanding the association between childhood maltreatment and risky sexual behaviors and youth pregnancy outcomes may help suggest preventive strategies.     

Screening for depression after cardiac events using the Beck Depression Inventory-II and the Geriatric Depression Scale

Despite findings that depression is a risk factor for heart disease and for death following cardiac events and that depressed cardiac patients experience significantly reduced quality of life and are less likely to follow treatment regimens, depression is neither adequately identified nor treated in cardiac patients. Recent calls in the literature for the use of standardized screening measures and sensitivity/specificity studies to identify useful measures compelled us to examine the sensitivity and specificity of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and recommend appropriate cut-scores for identifying depression in post-myocardial infarction or unstable angina patients. A total of 119 patients who met criteria for either acute myocardial infarction or unstable angina pectoris were recruited from coronary care units at three hospitals and interviewed in their homes approximately 2 weeks post-admission. The criterion used in the study was the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders (SCID-I/NP). Administration of the SCID-I/NP, BDI-II, and GDS was counterbalanced using a digram-balanced approach and blinded comparison was used. Alphas were .89 for BDI-II and .88 for GDS. For major depression, a BDI-II cut-score of 10 produced a sensitivity = 100%, specificity = 75%, and PPV = 18% whereas a GDS cut-score of 14 produced sensitivity = 100%, specificity = 94%, and PPV = 50%. For major/double depression, a BDI-II cut-score of 10 produced sensitivity = 100%, specificity = 75%, and PPV = 21% whereas a GDS cut-score of 13 produced sensitivity = 100%, specificity = 91%, and PPV = 41%. Although both measures demonstrated excellent reliability and sensitivity, the GDS showed better specificity and PPV and is recommended as the better screen for major depression or double depression with cardiac patients.     

The Gendered Implications of Corporate Value Change

Using case study evidence of a local authority and a building society this article explores the gendered implications of corporate value change programmes and how these are mediated by the types of equality agendas in place at the organizational level. The article explores the gendered impact of new corporate values by identifying how the organizations' changing approach to selection and career development has unintended gendered consequences, affecting different groups in the organization depending on the specific department they are working in and their seniority. As the two organizations follow different equality agendas the data allow us to show the ways in which specific approaches to equality in organizations both shape and are shaped by corporate value change programmes. It is argued that corporate value change programmes have uneven gendered implications, depending on the specific context in which they are introduced and in particular, the ways in which managers and employees make sense of these by both rejecting and reinforcing existing equality agendas already in place.     

Co-Production and Self-Care: New Approaches to Managing Community Care Services for Older People1

A lack of management theory which is relevant to human service agencies, combined with a failure to recognize the very large contribution which older people make to their own care, makes it difficult to deliver supportive services effectively. Self care by elders is divided, in this preliminary classification, into new strategies for everyday living, the reallocation of time and the avoidance of risk. Managers who understand that service users are co-producers of care and recognize the need to manage the users, as well as their own staff and relations with other agencies, are more likely to be able to deliver good services. However the management of co-production is at present only theorized for the private sector where ethical issues are less pressing and users are customers. In future a greater understanding of co-production and the development of theory and practice which will combine the management of co-production with the empowerment of users within the public sector will be essential.     

“Getting even”: Clinical considerations of adaptive and maladaptive vengeance

This article is intended to acquaint the reader with the concept of vengeance. Conceptualized as the intense, compelling wish or intention to get even, right a wrong, or avenge an injury, vengeance is best understood on a continuum from innocuous retaliatory fantasies/actions on one end of the continuum to meeting out of death and destruction on the other end. This article identifies various manifestations of vengeance, discusses theoretical formulations related to affects in general and vengeance, in particular, and presents a series of case vignettes which highlight the adaptive and maladaptive function of this psychological phenomenon.