Promoting child protection, welfare and healing: the case for developing best practice

This paper presents a 'best practice perspective' on child and family work. This involves moving beyond the 'deficit perspective' which dominates how the literature examines practice negatively in terms of what is not being done well to one which sets out best practice positively as a model for learning and developing systems and practice competencies. The paper focuses specifically on the meanings and development of best practice in family support in the context of child protection work. This involves work that is not only sensitive to achieving child protection and empowering practice in the context of power differences, but which meets the challenges of engaging therapeutically with and ultimately helping (often resistant) service users. The paper argues that issues of trauma and healing, and self-actualization more broadly, need to move to the centre of how family support and child protection are theorized and done. The aim should be to promote child protec-tion, welfare and healing through the development of egalitarian relationships in what Giddens calls the 'democratic family'.     

Normal stress and coping

Many Black families have chosen alternative lifestyles to accommodate the realities in their lives. The diversity in their lifestyles has often been viewed as “deviance” or “pathological” by White-oriented social science professionals. Black families, however, encounter the pressures any American family may face, and in addition they live under the continuous and varying stress of racially motivated oppression and inequalities that affect many aspects of their lives. The alternative lifestyles many Black American families have developed help to illuminate how Black families cope with the dual stresses of race and life events. This article describes the impact of stress in the lives of two of the variant alternative family forms found in Black families—a single parent family and an extended family. The two families are part of a comprehensive longitudinal study of Black families and their children, the Toddler and Infant Experiences Study (TIES). In addition to documentation of family stress, the data are examined within a conceptual framework that recognizes the dual stress factors of race and life events.     

Social work,postmodernism, and marxism

This article sets out to question two dominant trends in social work theorizing: ‘pure postmodernism and those attempts to revitalize emancipatory social work by combining elements of postmodernism with elements of a broadly Althusserian Marxism. The article starts by addressing the foundations of postmodern theorizing in social work, rejecting its claims for emancipatory theory. It proceeds to look at the concern with language and identity within this paradigm and suggests that, as formulated, neither offers an adequate understanding of the material hardship and oppressions facing clients. Writing from a classical Marxist perspective, the authors argue that the influence of postmodernism is a backward step in trying to understand the poverty, oppression, and inequality facing the majority of social work clients.     

Are You an Animal Too? US and Malawian Infants' Categorization of Plastic and Wooden Animal Replicas

In this study, we examined the effects of infant country and exemplar material on 24 US and 22 Malawian (African) 15‐month‐olds' categorization of animals versus vehicles. Following familiarization with either plastic or wooden animal replicas, infants were tested with objects of both materials in a standard object‐examining task. Both US and Malawian infants demonstrated category formation regardless of the material of the animal replicas. In addition, infants extended a category of plastic animals to novel wooden animals, but did not extend a category of wooden animals to novel plastic animals. These findings document a uniform impact of stimuli characteristics on infant object categorization despite differences in infant cultural background and toy animal experience. In addition, they show that, in some cases, infants can generalize their categorization of animals from one type of replica to another.     

Sustaining and Strengthening a Macro Identity: The Association of Macro Practice Social Work

Macro practice focuses on community-level interventions, such as management, organizing, research, and policy advocacy. Despite social work's deep roots in this type of work, macro practice and macro practitioners often practice without support or connections with other macro practitioners, and are underrepresented in the profession. In 2006, a group of social workers, including academics and practitioners, formed the Association of Macro Practice Social Work (AMPSW). AMPSW works to strengthen the professional identity of macro practitioners, elevate the status of macro social workers, and address common concerns within the social work profession.     

Predicting geographic transience in homeless young adults across three U.S. cities: Who are these frequent flyers and distance travelers?

ABSTRACT

Prior research reveals high rates of geographic mobility (i.e., transience) among homeless young adults (HYAs). Yet to date, little is known about predictors of different aspects of their transience as well as characteristics of the most highly transient HYAs. This study thus used the risk/resilience framework to identify predictors of three measures of HYAs’ transience (i.e., number of intercity moves, total distance traveled, and average distance traveled) as well as to identify the characteristics of the most highly transient HYAs: frequent flyers (i.e., HYAs with seven or more intercity moves), distance travelers (i.e., HYAs who have traveled average distances greater than 1,092 kilometers), and combined frequent flyers and distance travelers (i.e., HYAs with seven or more intercity moves and average travel distances greater than 1,092 kilometers). Purposive sampling was used to recruit 601 HYAs (ages 18–24) from Los Angeles, Austin, and Denver. Three Ordinary Least Squares regression models identified predictors of each facet of transience. Chi-square tests and independent t-tests were then used to identify profiles of frequent flyers and distance travelers by using the upper quartiles on the variables number of intercity moves and average distance traveled, respectively. Findings reveal similarities in the risk predictors and profiles. The resilience characteristic of self-reliance was a consistent predictor of all three measures of transience. Understanding that transience among HYAs serves both adaptive and maladaptive purposes can inform service providers in customizing interventions aimed at supporting adaptive travel to make it safer as well as preventing and reducing maladaptive travel.     

Air Male: Exploring Flight Attendant Masculinities in North America and Thailand

Flight attendant work, although now referred to with gender-neutral terminology, continues to be archetypically feminine. Male flight attendants are often assumed to be gay, which frequently includes an emasculated, hyper-sexualised dimension to the stereotyped minority within the female-dominated occupation. The ways in which straight men navigate this occupation and its gendered/hypersexualised connotations problematises both the notions of a gay community as well as flight attendant work as inherently or necessarily feminine. Based on ethnography amongst flight attendants who work for two international airlines, this paper considers how notions of masculinity and heteronormativity operate in a feminised occupational role and how workplace dynamics affect gendered senses of self and relations with others, including with coworkers and in the public.