Employment mobility or turnover? An analysis of child welfare and protection employee retention

This article challenges the commonly held assumption that there is a high level of occupational turnover of social workers in all child protection and welfare agencies. By analysing occupational mobility patterns (turnover, retention and attrition) in five child protection social work teams, the article demonstrates how occupational mobility is a complex phenomenon and needs to be understood within wider shifts in employment patterns and the gendering of professions. In this paper we argue that it is important to distinguish between employee turnover and employee mobility, and that an examination of the posts taken up after leaving, at least in Ireland, may provide a different perspective on the narrative of high turnover of workers in this sector. Within the five teams, it is estimated that there was a turnover rate of 8 percent in 2006 and 11 percent in 2010, with 72 percent of child protection workers in post at the end of 2005 being retained and still in post at the end of 2010. While this should not lead to complacency, or a failure to recognise and respond to the stressful nature of child protection, it does raise questions for employers about how they might plan for occupational mobility within a stable workforce made up of largely women, aged between 25 and 35, frequently newly-qualified, who are often the main carers for children and adults outside the workplace.     

Tests for Regression Models Fitted to Survey Data

Data from complex surveys are being used increasingly to build the same sort of explanatory and predictive models as those used in the rest of statistics. Unfortunately the assumptions underlying standard statistical methods are not even approximately valid for most survey data. The problem of parameter estimation has been largely solved, at least for routine data analysis, through the use of weighted estimating equations, and software for most standard analytical procedures is now available in the major statistical packages. One notable omission from standard software is an analogue of the likelihood ratio test. An exception is the Rao–Scott test for loglinear models in contingency tables. In this paper we show how the Rao–Scott test can be extended to handle arbitrary regression models. We illustrate the process of fitting a model to survey data with an example from NHANES.     

Using Football Metaphor to Engage Men in Therapeutic Support

This paper is an account of a small scale exploratory study about the use and value of football metaphor as a device for facilitating therapeutic work. It is based on an evaluation which used a range of qualitative and quantitative approaches. In this paper, we selectively draw on the qualitative data to provide examples to inform our discussion. We illustrate various ways in which football metaphor can support therapeutic change: by aiding initial engagement, facilitating mutual support, enabling self-understanding and motivating change. We relate our analysis to the literature about the therapeutic value of metaphor and highlight the salience of using football metaphor in a group-based setting for men who are often seen as ‘hard to engage’ in therapeutic support. With some caveats, we argue that football metaphor offers a potentially rich and flexible therapeutic resource.     

Advocacy and surveillance: primary schools teachers’ relationships with asylum-seeking mothers in Ireland

The article analyses the findings of a small-scale qualitative study in Ireland that examines interactions between asylum-seeking mothers and primary school teachers, and highlights the significance of teachers’ understandings of asylum in shaping home-school communications. Mothers and children in this study were living in Direct Provision, collective accommodation for asylum seekers in Ireland. The research identifies a number of concerns including: poor communication between the school and mothers, only English being used as a medium of communication with the mothers, and mothers being directly and indirectly excluded from Parent Associations. Interactions of teachers with asylum-seeker mothers demonstrated a lack of recognition that their situation is different from other migrants/newcomers and is particularly challenging because of the because of living in Direct Provision and under the threat of deportation. The research shows that primary schools are drawn into ambiguous relationships with asylum-seeking mothers in their attempts at advocacy and surveillance, as they are expected to facilitate integration, while at the same time dealing with the uncertainty facing asylum-seeking parents and children.     

Imperial culture and cultural imperialism

During the period of colonialism the imperial powers had to create a situation in which the inevitability and necessity of subjugation was felt. Colonised peoples were presented as children. Indigenous knowledge was considered inferior to the knowledge of Europeans. European academic diplomas were considered as more useful than vocational training. Still it is a common occurrence in many countries throughout the world to use external exams of the old colonial power. The number of persons with diplomas exceeds the places vacant. Stereotypes of the colonial past still carry weight. UK history teaching is still primarily Anglo‐centric. In the media, developing countries only ever figure in the news when disaster strikes. The new form of cultural imperialism: the sheer volume of television programmes produced in the USA, with all of its assumptions and values, may be more dangerous than any which existed in colonial times.     

The Painful Truth: Interpretation of Facial Expressions of Pain in Older Adults

The purpose of this study was to determine whether it is more difficult to decode facial expressions of pain in older than in younger adults. The facial expressions of 10 younger and 10 older chronic pain patients undergoing a painful diagnostic test were viewed on videotape by untrained judges. Judges estimated the severity of pain being experienced by the patients. Ratings made of the older faces during painful moments described more pain, and appeared more accurate, than those made of younger faces. Judges also reported seeing more pain in posed, masked, and baseline facial expressions in the older adults. Age-related structural changes to the face were not responsible for this bias. This suggests that judges were predisposed to see pain in the faces of the older patients, and undermines the assumption that their ratings of pain in the painful moment segments were accurate.     

Response

Edmund King, England 1175–1425 (1979), xiii+208 (Routledge &; Kegan Paul, £6.50).

G. R. Quaife, Wanton Wenches and Wayward Wives. Peasants and Illicit Sex in Early Seventeenth Century England (1979), 282 (Croom Helm, £11.50).

Louis Bergeron, Banquiers, négociants et manufacturiers parisiens du Directoire à l'Empire (1978), 436 (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, collection ‘Civilisations et Sociétés’ no. 51, Mouton, Paris, 130 fr.). (Bankers, Merchants and Manufacturers in Paris from the Directory to the Empire)

Clive Emsley, British Society and the French Wars, 1793–1815 (1979), viii+216 (Macmillan, £8.95, paperback £3.95).

Dennis Hardy, Alternative Communities in Nineteenth Century England (1979) xii+268 (Longman, £9.95; paperback £5.95).

Richard Lawton (ed.) The Census and Social Structure (1978), xii+330 (Frank Cass, £12.50).

M. Jeanne Peterson, The Medical Profession in Mid‐Victorian London (1978) x+406 (University of California Press, £12.25).

Michael D. Biddiss (ed.) Images of Race (1979), 259 (Leicester University Press, £9.50, paperback £5.00).

Hans Pohl (ed.), Forschungen zur Lage der Arbeiter im Industrialisierungtprozeß (1978), 132 (Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, DM 32). (Studies of Working‐class Conditions in the Process of Industrialization)

Jack Common (ed.), Seven Shifts (1978), xi+271 (E.P. Pubulishing, £5.95).

Robert Currie, Industrial Politics (1979), xiii+294 (Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, £10.00).

Pogge von Strandmann, Unternehmens‐Politik und Unternehmens‐Fuehrung: Der Dialog zwischen Aufsichtsrat und Vorstand bei Mannetmann, 1900 bis 1919 (1978), 204 (ECON Verlag, Diisseldorf, DM 28). (The Politics and Leadership of Enterprise: The Dialogue between Directors and Management of Mannesmann)     

Estimation of the Distribution Function of a Standardized Statistic

For estimating the distribution of a standardized statistic, the bootstrap estimate is known to be local asymptotic minimax. Various computational techniques have been developed to improve on the simulation efficiency of uniform resampling, the standard Monte Carlo approach to approximating the bootstrap estimate. Two new approaches are proposed which give accurate yet simple approximations to the bootstrap estimate. The second of the approaches even improves the convergence rate of the simulation error. A simulation study examines the performance of these two approaches in comparison with other modified bootstrap estimates.