The Use of Adventure Therapy Techniques by Clinical Social Workers: Implications for Practice and Training

Adventure therapy, an experiential intervention that combines outdoor, adventure based activities and group process, is used in direct practice by clinical social workers; however, it is unclear to what extent clinical social workers are actually utilizing these techniques. This research project surveyed a random sample of clinical social workers and examined in greater depth how they are utilizing adventure therapy programming with different clients in various treatment settings, as well as what type of education and training they received for engaging in these practices. A random sample of 646 clinical social workers in NASW responded to the survey, and more than 1/3 of this sample (35.1 %) reported the use of adventure based activities for therapeutic purposes in their social work practice. However, few of the social workers reported formal education or training in the use of adventure therapy, highlighting the need for more attention in both educational and clinical settings to proper instruction around this growing intervention.     

EAT,DWELL, ORIENT

Through a comparative analysis of Julie and Julia and Ginger and Ganesh, this paper examines a pair of culinary texts, similarly organized, that turn to digital media in order to build a narrative about a year-long experiment with food. Through this juxtaposition of two very similar texts, the essay sets in motion a debate about how Asian Americanist critique can open an important window into understanding this sub-genre of Internet-based writing. Though my analysis remains critical of the latent racial implications of each text, I am not denigrating the value of either text or dismissing the potential that either text has to articulate female subjectivity through the lens of the culinary. Rather, my interest in these particular texts derives from wanting to make sense of how texts by avowed feminists who make use of the Internet in order to construct a form of gendered solidarity that ostensibly crosses lines of age, race and class, might also produce familiar Orientalist orthodoxies that continue to marginalize communities of colour, particularly women of colour, in ways that mark a deep anxiety about the position of the middle-class white feminist in the contemporary racial moment.     

Does educational inequality predict exercise of users' choice? Survey evidence from domiciliary care services among elderly in Oslo,Norway

The traditional goal of equality in services remains at the heart of the Scandinavian welfare model; however, in recent decades, policymakers have also placed increased emphasis on user influence over services. Voice and choice are two channels to achieve this goal. The possibility to give feedback and voicing dissatisfaction to service providers (voice) is a well-established channel of service users' influence, however it is increasingly supplemented by user choice schemes (choice), where one can choose between different public and private service providers. We use the case of domiciliary care for the elderly to examine how the traditional goal of user equality is associated with the growing emphasis on user influence through voice and choice. The analyses are based on user surveys carried out by the municipality in the city of Oslo, which is arguably the only municipality in Norway where user choice plays a significant role in elderly care. Since the municipality subsidizes the private providers, individual economic resources should have less relevance. However, voicing dissatisfaction and choosing between different providers may anticipate cognitive resources that are not equally distributed among the users. The survey data indicate that there is an association between level of education and propensity to exploit all channels of user influence. Expanding user influence by introducing user choice thus confirms the differences between highly educated and less educated.     

Explaining differences in unemployment benefit takeup between labour migrants and Dutch native workers

The large increase in Eastern European migrants entering the Dutch labour market has led to concerns about their potential claim on Dutch unemployment benefits. We use a decomposition analysis to investigate differences in uptake of unemployment benefits between migrants and native Dutch employees by analysing register data for all employees in the Netherlands in 2015. The results show that Eastern European migrants, similar to other migrants, receive unemployment benefit more often than native Dutch employees. This difference can be largely ascribed to job characteristics. The inclusion of unemployment risk in the analysis reveals that non-working migrants are much less likely to receive unemployment benefits than Dutch natives.     

The promise and pitfalls of composite endpoints in sepsis and COVID-19 clinical trials

Composite endpoints reveal the tendency for statistical convention to arise locally within subfields. Composites are familiar in cardiovascular trials, yet almost unknown in sepsis. However, the VITAMINS trial in patients with septic shock adopted a composite of mortality and vasopressor-free days, and an ordinal scale describing patient status rapidly became standard in COVID studies. Aware that recent use could incite interest in such endpoints, we are motivated to flag their potential value and pitfalls for sepsis research and COVID studies.     

Floods and maternal healthcare utilisation in Bangladesh

Population and Environment - Floods are a common natural hazard in Bangladesh, and climate change is expected to further increase flooding frequency, magnitude and extent. Pregnant women...     

Extending the Quantitative Assessment of Industrial Risks to Earthquake Effects

In the general framework of quantitative methods for natural‐technological (NaTech) risk analysis, a specific methodology was developed for assessing risks caused by hazardous substances released due to earthquakes. The contribution of accidental scenarios initiated by seismic events to the overall industrial risk was assessed in three case studies derived from the actual plant layout of existing oil refineries. Several specific vulnerability models for different equipment classes were compared and assessed. The effect of differing structural resistances for process equipment on the final risk results was also investigated. The main factors influencing the final risk values resulted from the models for equipment vulnerability and the assumptions for the reference damage states of the process equipment. The analysis of case studies showed that in seismic zones the additional risk deriving from damage caused by earthquakes may be up to more than one order of magnitude higher than that associated to internal failure causes. Critical equipment was determined to be mainly pressurized tanks, even though atmospheric tanks were more vulnerable to containment loss. Failure of minor process equipment having a limited hold‐up of hazardous substances (such as pumps) was shown to have limited influence on the final values of the risk increase caused by earthquakes.     

Constraining campaigning: the legal treatment of non-profit policy advocacy across 24 countries

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the findings of a 24 country study of the legal restrictions on the freedom of non-profit and charitable organisations to engage in public policy campaigning. The countries are divided into those which organise the legal status of non-profit bodies around the concept of a charity, and those that do not. The central finding is that all and only charity law countries have constraints on campaigning which are specific to non-profit bodies. The paper reviews a number of possible explanations for this, at the level of jurisprudential rationales which might show that it is necessary or at least rational for only the charity law countries to have developed such restrictions. To varying degrees, all are found wanting. It is suggested that no explanation based on an ‘inner logic of the law’ will serve to explain the phenomenon, and that future research might concentrate on comparative political history rather than on jurisprudence. Planning Officer, Social Services Department, Royal County of Berkshire. formerfy Acting Head of Policy Analysis and Research, National Council for Voluntary Organisations, London, United Kingdom. (Most of the research for this paper was conducted when this author was Head of Policy Analysis and Research at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, London, UK.) Full information about the research summarised here is given in 6 and Randon, 1994. This research was conducted with the support of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. We are grateful to all our respondents for their time in answering a difficult questionnaire, provision of documentation and alternative contacts, patience and advice. They are too numerous to list here: a full list is available from the authors. Some, to whom we are particularly grateful, must remain anonymous because they work in countries or in professional positions where campaigning is a sensitive subject. The Nuffield Foundation made available a small grant to cover our translation costs; PROFTRANS undertook most of the translations for us. Martin Knapp, Marilyn Taylor and Nigel Tarling helped to identify potential respondents. Tymen van der Ploeg, Jacques Defourny and Lindsay Driscoll assisted in piloting the questionnaire. Lindsay Driscoll and Bridget Phelps read and commented on early drafts of part of the paper. The editors and anonymous referees for this journal provided important additional information and advice. The usual disclaimer of responsibility for our errors applies to all of them.     

Control in craft work: The case of production potters

This paper examines the social organization of a craft profession (as opposed to an art world), namely production pottery. The analysis focuses on control as the important dependent variable and examines features of the social organization that may influence the amount of control that a production potter has over matters such as work schedule, product and choice of marketing outlets. One conclusion is that stratification along a time dimension (i.e. the length of time that one has been in the profession) is an important independent variable influencing amount of control. The paper concludes with a brief analysis of the controversy surrounding the concepts of “art” and “craft” as members of the study perceive this distinction. I would like to express my gratitude to Robert R. Faulkner who was a constant source of encouragement and inspiration. Special thanks to him for having carefully read and commented upon the various drafts of this paper.     

A hierarchical frailty model applied to two-generation melanoma data

We present a hierarchical frailty model based on distributions derived from non-negative Lévy processes. The model may be applied to data with several levels of dependence, such as family data or other general clusters, and is an alternative to additive frailty models. We present several parametric examples of the model, and properties such as expected values, variance and covariance. The model is applied to a case-cohort sample of age at onset for melanoma from the Swedish Multi-Generation Register, organized in nuclear families of parents and one or two children. We compare the genetic component of the total frailty variance to the common environmental term, and estimate the effect of birth cohort and gender.