Would Palliative Care Patients Benefit from Social Workers' Retaining the Traditional 'Casework' Role rather than Working as Care Managers? A Prospective Serial Qualitative Interview Study

Social workers have made a significant contribution to the developmentand delivery of palliative care. Both palliative care and socialwork are rapidly evolving but, given their changing contextsand increasing workloads, can they sustain compatibility? Advancesin treatment of life-threatening illness mean that people livelonger in a period of palliative care. Social work has undergoneradical change in the wake of the 1990 NHS and Community CareAct and subsequent local-authority modernizations, with socialworkers now given the role of care managers, rather than themore traditional ‘casework’ or therapeutic role.This paper aims to explore the current and potential role ofthe social worker in palliative care for people with cancerand other prolonged life-threatening illness. It draws uponevidence from a prospective qualitative, patient-centred researchstudy, which detailed the experiences of forty people with lungcancer and advanced cardiac failure, and their personal andprofessional carers (Murray et al., 2002). A total of two hundredand nineteen qualitative interviews were carried out. We found that social workers were conspicuous by their absencefrom the lives of these forty vulnerable adults, who were livingand dying in the community with many unmet needs which, potentially,could be met by social-work input. The study highlights sixareas of concern in which social-work assessment and interventioncould have impacted on dying patients’ quality of lifeand that of their carers: loss and dependency, family-centredissues, carers’ needs, practical tasks, emotional andspiritual struggles, and finally, support needs of staff. Theseareas are outlined to explore the territory which a social workermight inhabit if resources and policies permitted.     

Chebyshev's inequality for nonparametric testing with small N and α in microarray research

Summary.  Microarrays are a powerful new technology that allow for the measurement of the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously. Owing to relatively high costs, sample sizes tend to be quite small. If investigators apply a correction for multiple testing, a very small p -value will be required to declare significance. We use modifications to Chebyshev's inequality to develop a testing procedure that is nonparametric and yields p -values on the interval [0, 1]. We evaluate its properties via simulation and show that it both holds the type I error rate below nominal levels in almost all conditions and can yield p -values denoting significance even with very small sample sizes and stringent corrections for multiple testing.     

Extended Dialogue About Significant Developments: Manualising Systemic Family Therapy: The Leeds Manual

Steve Allison and Amaryll Perlesz review a systemic family therapy manual developed at the Leeds Family Therapy and Research Centre. Responding to the critique, Helen Pote gives an account of the manual's history, and its reception in the UK.     

Parent and Child Therapy: An Attachment‐Based Intervention for Children With Challenging Problems

Parent and Child Therapy (PACT) is an attachment‐based intervention for children aged between 4 and 12 years old experiencing emotional and behavioural problems. It is appropriate for distressed parent—child relationships which have not responded to systemic family therapy. PACT seeks to reframe parent—child relationship distress using narrative techniques and experiential tasks based on the concept of supported looking. Therapy occurs in parallel for parent and child using a one‐way screen. PACT improves parents' reflective capacity and sensitivity, and for the child's sense of security in her primary attachment relationship. An outline of the four stages of PACT is presented along with a case study to illustrate the course of PACT. Finally, we discuss the dissemination of PACT within a busy child and adolescent mental health service and outline our plans for future outcome evaluation.     

Anger Perception, Caregivers' Use of Physical Discipline, and Aggression in Children at Risk

We analyzed the relations between teacher reports of aggressive behaviors, caregiver reports of their use of physical discipline, anger perception accuracy, and anger perception bias in middle childhood and teacher reports of aggressive behaviors two years later in a sample of children from economically disadvantaged families (n =152). Fisher r‐to‐z analyses showed a gender difference in the relation between anger perception accuracy and aggressive behavior in third grade. For girls, anger perception accuracy was significantly negatively related to aggression, and for boys, there was no relation between anger perception accuracy and aggression. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that third grade aggressive behavior, caregivers’ reports of their use of physical discipline, and anger perception bias were significantly positively related to teacher reports of aggressive behavior two years later after controlling for gender and anger perception accuracy.     

Osteoporosis knowledge and attitudes: a cross-sectional study among college-age students

OBJECTIVE: The authors' purpose in this study was to investigate the influence of knowledge of osteoporosis, attitudes regarding osteoporosis, and knowledge of dietary calcium on dairy product intake in both male and female college-age students. PARTICIPANTS: The authors conducted this cross-sectional study on 911 men and women enrolled in 2 demographically similar universities. METHODS: A modified osteoporosis knowledge questionnaire assessed participant's general osteoporosis knowledge and perceived disease risk. RESULTS: The authors found that knowledge of osteoporosis and calcium did not significantly influence dairy product intake. Attitude regarding osteoporosis was a significant predictor of dairy product intake in men but was not significant for the women. CONCLUSIONS: The authors recommend development and implementation of educational programs designed to increase awareness of calcium-rich food sources as well as other risk factors of this crippling disease.     

Making it on the Outside: Understanding Barriers to Women’s Post‐Incarceration Reintegration

The increasing rate of imprisonment in the United States over the past few decades resulted in record numbers of individuals reentering society upon release. As men and women exit through prison gates, they encounter a range of obstacles that complicate their efforts to “make it” on the outside. Given the gendered impact of recent punitive prison policies, this essay focuses on women and traces their steps as they navigate the many complex, interrelated, and competing obstacles to successful reintegration post‐incarceration. In particular, this essay describes how many barriers, and women’s reentry experience more broadly, are shaped by gender, race, and class. Further, drawing on the feminist pathways perspective, we examine women’s reentry in light of their pathways into offending focusing, in particular, on their victimization history.