Situating social work within the post-2015 Global Agenda

ABSTRACT

The launch of the post-2015 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN) initiates a new set of global priorities to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Over a three-year process, governments and civil society representatives at the UN planned and negotiated the post-2015 Agenda and a set of SDGs and targets. Unlike the MDGs which focused almost entirely on developing countries, the new agenda is intended to be universal and therefore applicable to Europe and North America. The goals address a wide range of issues including poverty and inequality, health, international trade, climate change and gender, with a strong emphasis on the environment. This article will provide an overview of the post-2015 process and explore the implications of this agenda for social work globally and locally. It will highlight areas of particular interest to the profession, especially prospects for addressing growing global inequality within and between countries, and concerns over the role of human rights protection. The advantages and limitations of linking social work’s global agenda to the new UN priorities will be assessed.     

Rejected by Family for Being Gay or Lesbian: Portrayals,Perceptions, and Resilience

A myriad of negative psychosocial outcomes face gay men and lesbians who experience rejection by their family for not being heterosexual. However, what constitutes rejection is not clear, and, more importantly, it is not known how resilience is fostered within such a context. This qualitative study sought to examine these issues by exploring the lived experiences of Australian gay men and lesbians who were previously or were currently experiencing family rejection because of their sexuality. A total of 21 in-depth, semistructured interviews were individually conducted and analyzed. Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed several themes that provided greater understanding of the portrayals and perceptions of family rejection; the impact of family rejection on mental health; and, importantly, how these individuals came to establish resilience in the face of experiencing family rejection. Limitations, directions for future research, and clinical implications of the findings are also discussed.     

Vulnerable infants program of Rhode Island: promoting permanency for substance-exposed infants

The Vulnerable Infants Program of Rhode Island is a care coordination program to promote permanency for substance-exposed infants by addressing parental needs and increasing collaboration among social service agencies. Over the first four years of the program, there was a decrease in time spent in the newborn nursery beyond medical necessity and identification of permanent placements by 12 months for 84% of infants, with the majority of infants (78%) placed with biological parents or relatives.     

Staying on topic,changing the topic: language and gender in the 1995 Louisiana governor's race

This study examines the gendered use of topic shifting within an electoral community of practice of ten candidates for the governor of Louisiana (three female, seven male) during two political debates. Despite gender, the candidates shared the same communicative goals of building camaraderie with voters as well as distinguishing themselves from each other within these debates. Due to these shared goals, the debate context provided a type of baseline setting to explore whether or not previously established language and gender patterns, such as male communicative goals being generally competitive and female goals being generally collaborative, hold in a public forum. Overall, topic shifting has tended to be seen as a conversational control mechanism associated with competition and male patterns of speech. However, meta-topic shifting (i.e., shifting the topic from a particular educational plan to education in general) has been seen as a collaborative strategy associated with female speech. The findings on men's speech and topic shifting did not support previous research; however, the findings on women's speech and meta-topic shifting did support previous research.     

Partnership and participation: contradictions and tensions in the social policy space

Partnerships and participation seem to be the order of the day. Yet, for many community organisations, this way of ordering the social policy space is contradictory, creating practice tensions that increase the complexity of local service systems. Such changes impact community organisations in a politics that needs to be made visible if they are to be able to act in the interests of their members and service users. We therefore outline the social policy space currently constituted by four major discourses: neo‐liberalism, managerialism, new paternalism and network governance as they intersect and interact chaotically, reshaping participation and partnerships between government, community service organisations and local communities. We then examine how policy as a technology or set of mechanisms is discursively creating contradictions and practice tensions within which community organisations engage for social justice.     

Depressed and Well Mothers' Emotion Interpretation Accuracy and the Quality of Mother—Infant Interaction

The inadequate parenting associated with mothers' depression may be related to mothers' problems in interpreting infants' emotional expressions. The relations between depressed and well mothers' accuracy at interpreting babies' facial expressions and the quality of the mothers' interactions with their infants were examined. In partial support of our hypotheses, depressed mothers' level of depressive symptoms was associated with less accuracy, especially regarding positive emotions. Contrary to expectations, depressed mothers did not differ from well mothers in terms of their emotion accuracy. Furthermore, depressed mothers' accuracy at interpreting infants' emotions was not significantly related to the quality of their interaction with their infants; in contrast, well mothers' accuracy for infants' negative emotions was associated with better interaction quality. These findings provide new information about depressed mothers' emotional interpretations and their parenting. The different pattern of findings for depressed and well mothers suggests that other mediating factors are important, which are discussed.