Social Workers' Responses to Experiences of Fear

Correspondence to Martin Smith, EDT c/o Social Services Department, Easton Street, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, HP11 1NH. E-mail: msmith{at}buckscc.gov.uk Summary This paper follows on from the paper ‘Social workers’experiences of fear’, written by the same authors, reportingon a research study that showed how social workers interviewedexperienced fears of assault, death, losing control and rejectionfrom their seniors during their working hours. Now, from thesame study, examples are given that illustrate ways in whichparticipants were affected by, and responded to, these fears.Substantive quotations from in-depth interviews are providedshowing effects of fears as being physical, cognitive and emotionaland as manifesting themselves differently with the passing oftime. Also given are examples of what it was that participantsfound to be helpful, or unhelpful, when attempting to deal withtheir fears and particular attention is paid to supervisionin this respect. The paper argues that drama therapy literaturehas much relevance to the management of fear as participantsoften reported different parts of themselves performing roleswhen affected by and responding to fears. Implications for socialwork training are considered in this light. Generally, it isclaimed that the more social workers can learn about fear andits manifestations and implications in their work, the betterthey will be able to respond to it and deal with it.     

Privatisation in Developing Countries: Performance and Ownership Effects

Over the last twenty years, privatisation, defined as the transfer of public assets (firms) from the government to private investors, has been on the reform agenda of more than 120 developing countries. The switch of ownership induces major changes in the corporate governance of firms, and in their incentives to restructure and improve efficiency and performance. This article evaluates this experience, focusing on its impact on corporate performance and governance, identifying several issues yet to be resolved.     

From Prevention to Partnership: Child Welfare Services Across Three Decades

SUMMARY. Throughout the lifetime of the NCB there have been significant changes of emphasis and direction in child welfare services in Britain, which are often reflected in the Bureau's own history. The priority given to the related spheres of child-care, child protection, delinquency control and preventive work with vulnerable families has shifted over the three decades and changed priorities have contributed to a changing service ethos. The new Children Act aims at balance and a fresh synthesis, centred on partnership; a concept which promises much but has yet to be fully tried and tested.     

Infants' Behavioral Strategies for Emotion Regulation With Fathers and Mothers: Associations With Emotional Expressions and Attachment Quality

This study examined 12‐ and 13‐month‐old infants' behavioral strategies for emotion regulation, emotional expressions, regulatory styles, and attachment quality with fathers and mothers. Eighty‐five infants participated in the Strange Situation procedure to assess attachment quality with mothers and fathers. Infants' behavioral strategies for emotion regulation were examined with each parent during a competing demands task. Emotion regulation styles were meaningfully related to infant‐father attachment quality. Although expressions of distress and positive affect were not consistent across mothers and fathers, there was consistency in infant strategy use, emotion regulation style, and attachment quality with mothers and fathers. Furthermore, infants who were securely attached to both parents showed greater consistency in parent‐oriented strategies than infants who were insecurely attached to one or both parents. Limitations of this study include the constrained laboratory setting, potential carryover effects, and a homogeneous, middle‐class sample.     

Asymptotics for multisample statistics

Consider a family of square-integrable R^d-valued statistics S_k = S_k(X_1,k1; X_2,k2;…; X_m,km), where the independent samples X_i,kj respectively have k_i i.i.d. components valued in some separable metric space X_i. We prove a strong law of large numbers, a central limit theorem and a law of the iterated logarithm for the sequence {S_k}, including both the situations where the sample sizes tend to infinity while m is fixed and those where the sample sizes remain small while m tends to infinity. We also obtain two almost sure convergence results in both these contexts, under the additional assumption that S_k is symmetric in the coordinates of each sample X_i,kj. Some extensions to row-exchangeable and conditionally independent observations are provided. Applications to an estimator of the dimension of a data set and to the Henze-Schilling test statistic for equality of two densities are also presented.     

Effects of Career Counseling on French Adults: An Experimental Study

This research project is focused on theoretical and empirical works analyzing the effects of career counseling. This experimental and longitudinal study has been carried out in France; it compares a sample of individuals having undertaken competence assessment with a control group and deals with self‐esteem, self‐analysis, self‐concept, and the participants' situations. The results correspond to the authors' main hypotheses: The effect size calculated for all the variables (+0.62) is similar to the one observed in the meta‐analyses concerning the same topic. The stability of effects has also been demonstrated for 2 out of 3 categories of variables (effect size +0.44) in spite of a slight decrease in the production of self‐concept. Finally, treatment intensity seems to have a lesser effect than the one expected, but it strengthens its role in the development of self‐analysis. The discussion focuses on the prospects for counseling practice assessment, as well as theoretical directions meriting future development.