On the margin? Residential child care in Scotland and Finland

Situated on the margins of Europe, Scotland and Finland are small countries which share similar demographic and economic profiles. In many European countries, residential child care can also be considered to be ‘on the margin’ of child care provision; there is ambivalence about residential care and a view that it should be used as a last resort. This paper examines systems and practices of residential care in Scotland and Finland, locating these in the context of wider child welfare policy in both countries. The underpinning principles of child welfare provision in both countries are similar—based on children's rights and primarily family-focused. In both countries there are also similar concerns about the fragmentation of child care provision and the cost of residential services. However, there are also important differences relating to child welfare provision and the use of residential care. In Finland, overall numbers of children in residential care are much greater than in Scotland; the age profile of these children and young people is very different; and the two countries vary markedly in the use of secure accommodation and custody. This comparative analysis suggests new ways of understanding the similarities and difference in the use of residential care in the two countries. It highlights the continuing challenge to develop residential care as a positive and integral part of a continuum of care services.     

On religious freedom and civic learning

In this article I look at the issue of religious freedom in today's world. It is clear that religious and ethnic divisions have led to much bloodshed in recent years. I look at the implications that recent developments have for the way we educate in religion, religious tolerance and religious freedom.     

Client Improvement and Working Alliance: Case-Manager Factors

ABSTRACT

To investigate working alliance and other factors in case managers' perceptions of client improvement, data were collected from 95 case manager–adult client pairs from community-based agencies. Per the multiple regression results, client improvement as perceived by case manager increased with level of working alliance as perceived by case manager, and with manager age and social work education at the bachelor's level and master's level. Such improvement decreased with level of client substance abuse as perceived by manager. No association was found between client improvement as perceived by case manager and four further tested factors: level of working alliance as perceived by client; homogeneous gender and ethnicity of client and case manager; case manager work experience; duration of client working with the current case manager. Implications for practice and education are discussed.     

Explaining Restrictive TANF Policies: Group Threat Hypothesis and State Economy Conditions

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether TANF policies' restrictiveness is related to states' racial composition and economic conditions. The data were extracted from various reports dated 2000–2014. Results from generalized least squares random-effects modeling showed the number of restrictive TANF policies to be associated positively with larger populations of Hispanic individuals and associated negatively with larger populations of African American individuals. No association was found between policies' restrictiveness and “other” minority population, nor between restrictiveness and either poverty or unemployment. One conclusion suggested by the analysis is that restrictive TANF policies result from dramatic increases in the Hispanic population that trigger the dominant group's resentment of ethnic minorities. Several policy implications are stated.     

Negative binomial time series models based on expectation thinning operators

The study of count data time series has been active in the past decade, mainly in theory and model construction. There are different ways to construct time series models with a geometric autocorrelation function, and a given univariate margin such as negative binomial. In this paper, we investigate negative binomial time series models based on the binomial thinning and two other expectation thinning operators, and show how they differ in conditional variance or heteroscedasticity. Since the model construction is in terms of probability generating functions, typically, the relevant conditional probability mass functions do not have explicit forms. In order to do simulations, likelihood inference, graphical diagnostics and prediction, we use a numerical method for inversion of characteristic functions. We illustrate the numerical methods and compare the various negative binomial time series models for a real data example.     

Long-term Care in China: Issues and Prospects

One of the major socioeconomic challenges China faces is the rapid aging of its population. China is now an aging society, even though it is still regarded as a middle-income economy. Coupled with the market-driven reform of social services and rapid erosion of family support, the provision of affordable and accessible social care services to older people has already become an urgent issue for the government to address. Looking into the future, the formulation of a sustainable position on long-term care (LTC) will increasingly become the major focus of social policy. This article sets out the background to the demographic shifts resulting in the emerging need for LTC in China. It analyzes the issues facing LTC services and reviews their prospects, including the structure, operation, financing, and interfacing of residential and community-based home care services.     

Tail Behavior of the Failure Rate Functions of Mixtures

The tail behavior of the failure rate of mixtures of lifetime distributions is studied. A typical result is that if the failure rate of the strongest component of the mixture decreases to a limit, then the failure rate of the mixture decreases to the same limit. For a class of distributions containing the gamma distributions this result can be improved in the sense that the behavior of the failure rate of the mixture asymptotically mirrors that of the strongest component in whether it decreases or increases to a limit. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Developing a Social Protection Index for Asia

Social protection is increasingly seen as an important tool for poverty reduction, but to date there have been few quantitative cross‐country assessments of social protection provision. This article develops a social protection index that systematically and consistently quantifies activities at the national level. Four summary indicators representing the cost, coverage, poverty targeting and impact are scaled and weighted to produce an additive index of the overall level of social protection provision. The index is calculated for six very different Asian countries: Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan and Vietnam. Considerable contrasts are revealed between their levels of social protection provision.