Learners' educational orientation as a design tool for human resource development professionals in law enforcement: a Caribbean context

The training academy of any law enforcement agency serves as the educational platform for personal, professional and academic development of law enforcement officers. It is essential that the training provided is reflective of best practices to enhance learning, curriculum design, educational policies and instructional techniques compatible with the educational orientation of their learners. To this end, it is proposed within this study that the learners' educational orientation be incorporated in the design phase of the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation) model. In an effort to determine the educational orientation of the participants, the study utilized the Student Orientation Questionnaire (SOQ) to analyse the educational orientation of law enforcement officers and its implication for training.     

Ageing Baby Boomers in Australia: Evidence Informing Actions for Better Retirement

The first Australian baby boomers are starting to retire. Consequently, it is essential to develop and apply a strong evidence base to facilitate their successful retirement and ongoing wellbeing. This review focuses on recent literature on pre‐retirement baby boomers to identify available research findings and gaps to be filled on retirement preparation. A notable shortage of empirical literature was found on pathways to retirement and financial plans. A trend emerged towards an intention to retire at an older age, and the main source of retirement income was expected to be superannuation. Over half of Australian boomers expect their savings to be sufficient; however, 30–50% anticipate a decline in their standard of living. The majority want the responsibility for funding retirement shared between the individual, government and employers. Further research is needed on the varying plans and expectations of men and women, of low‐skilled workers, and those from culturally diverse backgrounds.     

‘We've Got One of Those’: The Peripheral Status of Women in Male Dominated Industries

This article uses evidence from 269 interviews in five companies to consider whether (i) equal opportunity laws, policies and practices, (ii) more women gaining post-entry professional qualifications, establishing themselves on the lower rungs of hitherto male careers, and working full-time, combined with (iii) projected skill shortages, are likely to break down gender segmentation and lead to greater equality in employment during the 1990s. The evidence suggests that even females who start strongly and appear potential high-fliers are still being obstructed by harsh, in some respects, and in other ways patronizing, workplace cultures, coupled with demands for career commitment that are incompatible with the domestic responsibilities which it is assumed women will adopt, and which the majority are in fact still adopting at least at certain stages during their working lives. The effects in the companies studied were to deflect women out of mainstream careers into peripheral occupations, or into peripheral jobs within skilled mainstream occupations. In these companies neither the men nor the exceptional women who were succeeding appeared a likely source of pressure for change, and male domination remained fully compatible with the firms' preferred skill formation strategies.     

Developing Congruence between Theory and Practice in Social Work – The Use of the Group Process

Social workers attempting to bring about social change are encouraged to select and develop practice models that reflect their own theoretical and personal stance. The use of the small group process is seen as one avenue worth exploring in any attempt to achieve effective social change.     

Ending the International-Domestic Dichotomy

This article calls for social work educators to abandon the conceptual separation of domestic and international content and move toward a curriculum with a truly global perspective. After reviewing the history and current state of the profession’s global-mindedness, the authors present three strategies for achieving a curriculum to meet students’ needs in the global environment of the millennium: the interim step of internationalizing the curriculum, then revising the profession’s value base, and adopting three unifying frameworks that offer channels for international dialogue and encourage a global outlook.     

Using client exit interviews to illuminate outcomes in program logic models: a case example

This paper describes how client exit interviews can assist human service administrators and workers to better understand the outcomes their programs are designed to accomplish. Specifically, the qualitative component of a demonstration family literacy program evaluation is used to illustrate how client input can be used to fine-tune the outcomes component of a program's logic model. An analysis of semi-structured exit interviews with 35 clients, who were randomly selected from all 89 served in the first year of the program, resulted in revision to the program's original logic model, creating explicit ‘testable’ pathways to achieving intended outcomes.     

What parents value from formal support services in the context of identified child abuse

Parents whose children are identified as having experienced or being at risk of experiencing significant harm potentially provide an invaluable dimension to our understanding of the circumstances that result in child abuse or neglect and how best to respond to these invariably complex situations. This paper reports findings from a study of the experiences of six parents.
In-depth interviews were conducted with four mothers and two fathers who had been referred to an intensive family support service by the Queensland statutory child protection authority. Using a critical ecological perspective, the study focused on identifying and understanding the experiences of the parents in using formal family support services, including aspects of service delivery that were helpful or unhelpful. Parents also commented on their experiences of statutory child protection services.
Service components and worker qualities that parents identified as being helpful included being accessible, targeted and integrated and being able to meet a continuum of needs, from a micro to a broader level. Their reports provide invaluable insight into how formal family support services, including child protection services, can better meet the needs of parents in addressing the recurring problem of child maltreatment.     

From Street‐level Bureaucrats to Street‐level Policy Entrepreneurs? Central Policy and Local Action in Lottery‐funded Community Cancer Care

Recent contributions to the policy implementation literature have applied Kingdon's model of ‘policy windows’ to the implementation of policy on health inequalities in the UK, and have identified the key role played by ‘policy entrepreneurs’ at local as well as national level. Despite this, the picture that emerges is of frustration of central policy intentions at the local level, alongside frustration of local aspirations by the centre. This article explores the relationship between central policy and local implementation in the context of a Lottery‐funded initiative to develop community cancer care in the UK. We examine the relationships: between the BIG Lottery Fund and central government; between BIG and the cancer care projects it funded; and between the projects and their local economy of cancer care. We found evidence of success both in vertical cascading of policy and in local policy innovation; 83 per cent of projects succeeded in obtaining continuation funding at the end of their Lottery funding. We suggest that this was due, in part, to two features of Lottery funding and accountability that combined to differentiate it from the other policy initiatives studied. They meant that projects were ‘buffered’ not just from national policy churn, but also from competing local priorities. In the ‘protected space’ that was thus formed, ‘street‐level policy entrepreneurs’ played a key role in developing cancer care innovations for adoption by mainstream funding agencies.