A Study of MSW and BSW Students' Perceptions of Their Field Instructors

In the study reported here, BSW and MSW students in field placements and a group of recent MSW graduates were surveyed to assess the impact of personal attributes, supervisory characteristics, and 11 instructional skills on their evaluation of their field instructors. Results indicated that the most influential variables were those representing task-oriented, educational aspects of field instruction. In addition, field instructors' availability, their use of process recordings, and the amount of supervision they gave students also influenced respondents' evaluations.     

A Comparison of Advanced Standing and Regular Master’s Students’ Performance in the Second-Year Field Practicum

The author surveyed field instructors of second-year graduate students to ascertain the instructors’ assessments of their students’ preparedness for and skill in social work practice. The variable of interest was traditional second-year or advanced placement status. Results indicate that, with few exceptions, there were no differences in field instructors’ evaluations based on status; those that existed favored advanced placement students. The implications of the findings for the continuing debates over advanced placement and an articulated continuum regarding the bachelor’s versus master’s social work degree are discussed.     

Bingo playing in the UK: The influence of demographic factors on play

Abstract

Despite the popularity of bingo, it is a little studied gambling behaviour. This study was conducted in order to obtain general information regarding the gambling behaviour of current UK bingo players. A total of 412 bingo players completed questionnaires about their gambling behaviour. The majority of participants (57%) played once or twice a week with a small percentage (3%) playing five or more times a week. A large percentage of participants also played the National Lottery (82%) and bought National Lottery scratchcards (40%), but very few ever gambled in a casino (6%). An analysis by age revealed that older bingo players were significantly more likely to play more often. However, younger players are more likely to spend more per bingo session. This paper adds significantly to a sparse literature. The data collected add to our understanding of the bingo phenomenon in the UK.     

Wars and Invisible Girls,Shadow Industries,and the Politics of Not-Knowing

This article begins in the interior of Mozambique during the country's post-independence war with the stories of three girls variously affected by violence. It then follows girls' war experiences in general out from the frontlines to wider international locales where girls face domestic violence in their home communities and civil and labor violence at the hands of (shadow) transnational profiteers; who reap billions of dollars yearly on children's factory, domestic, and sexual labor. The article is set in an overall theoretical framework that explores how a politics of invisibility - literally of 'not-knowing' - has developed in which little public information is available on children's human rights violations or on the political tactics and economic gain that have attended to these violations.     

“Unexpected and Distressing”: Understanding and Improving the Experience of Transferring Palliative Care Inpatients to Residential Care

The survival of patients with advanced cancer, coupled with the increased presence of end-stage chronic illnesses in an aging population, is leading to a demand in palliative care. Due to the ongoing need for acute-pain and symptom control in hospice/palliative care units, few are able to offer long-stay admission for those whose symptoms have stabilized. When a patient no longer requires specialist palliative care services, transfer from an inpatient palliative care facility may then be necessary. A core component of the role of palliative-care social workers involves working with patients and their families/carers when the care pathway shifts and the option of residential aged care facility (RACF) needs to be considered. This research explored several issues, including the impact of this transition on the patient and their families and on the interdisciplinary health care team treating the patient. An investigation was undertaken to identify concerns and barriers regarding the transition from hospice care to RACF and opportunities were highlighted to improve clinical practice in this area. A tripartite approach was adopted conducting face-to-face interviews with patients, their families/carers, and health care professionals. Members of the interdisciplinary team were interviewed and social workers working in similar inpatient palliative-care facilities undertook telephone interviews to gauge their experiences. A thematic analysis discerned a number of themes highlighting the impact of this transition on key stakeholders and incorporated recommendations to improve or best manage this process. The research has highlighted the difficulties that patients/families encounter in this transition, as well as the emphases of protecting the integrity of the patient and family. This is achieved by holding open and ongoing dialogue, particularly through family meetings and working in collaboration with the patient, the family, and the team. Understanding the experience and impact of this transition on key stakeholders is helpful in building up a knowledge base and to ensure a more effective relationship occurs. This research incorporated the voices of terminally ill patients, families, and members of the health care team in order to understand their views and recommendations for best managing the transition from a hospice/inpatient palliative-care facility to a RACF. This enables their input to have some real impetus in clinical practice and service delivery.     

Toward increased public representation on bioethics committees: Lessons from Judging the cold war human radiation experiments∗

The process of judging the Cold War Human Radiation Experiments illuminates a need to develop a model for an appropriate public role on bioethics committees. A citizen representative was appointed to the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, and the Committee solicited broad public participation in their investigation. However, many members of the affected and interested public desired further representation on the Committee, as they tended towards stronger ethical condemnations of the experiments than the Committee expressed. I offer an account of a testimony before the Committee by a radiation experiment subject's survivor to illustrate this contrast in moral perspective. I consider some the contributions that “non‐expert”; public members can add to committee deliberations, and suggest that concerns about public representatives may be overcome with the guidance of clearer principles for selecting public members. Further efforts to increase membership by the general and affected public on bioethics committees will enhance deliberations and help realize the democratic ideals of bioethics.     

Economic and Psychological Benefits from Employment: the experiences and perspectives of mothers of disabled children

This qualitative research explores the perspectives and experiences of employed mothers of disabled children particularly with respect to the potential benefits of employment. Forty families with at least one disabled child, representing a variety of family structures and work situations, participated in semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study clearly illustrate that the economic, psychological and social benefits for mothers of disabled children from participation in paid work are strikingly similar to those for employed mothers of non-disabled children. This suggests that the low level of labour force participation of mothers of disabled children in comparison with other mothers is most likely a consequence of the inherent ideological and structural barriers these women face, rather than their qualitatively differing needs. Streamlining of the benefits system, integration both within and between health, education and social services, increased flexibility in the workplace, and dialogue and co-ordination between all of these elements, may go some way to providing the support these mothers need.     

Neighborhood-Based Services: Organizational Change and Integration Prospects

Prospects for service integration between settlement houses, or traditional neighborhood centers that offer services for individuals ranging from preschool children to the elderly, and family resource centers, agencies that provide support for families and early childhood education programs, are explored in this Rochester, New York, case study. Although the target populations of these two types of organizations overlap, service integration is not likely in the short run due to differing organizational philosophies and the adaptation of each organization to unique funding sources. Increased funding pressures and demands for greater efficiency in service delivery may make collaboration more attractive in the future.     

After September 11

A major question in studying the relationship between mass media and society is whether mass media are agents of social change or reinforcers of the status quo. This study examined media portrayal of women to explore the relationship between the media and society within the Chinese context. Through a content analysis of 352 cover pictures of Women of China, China's official English women's magazine for foreign publicity, the authors investigated whether and how the media portrayal of Chinese women relates to China's social changes. Our findings show that the image of Chinese women presented by the covers of Women of China is to a large extent influenced by the socio-economic and political-ideological changes in China. Rather than a literal portrayal of the “reality,” it is a symbolic representation of the Chinese women created through the interaction of party ideology, editorial policy, and readers' taste as well as the changing reality of Chinese women's life and work. The interlocking of party control and societal influences has determined the typical images of “Chinese Women” suited to particular periods of time in the contemporary Chinese history.     

Transforming habit: revolution,routine and social change

Compelling recent scholarly work has explored the crucial role affect, emotion and feeling might play in activating radical social and political change. I argue, however, that some narratives of ‘affective revolution’ may actually do more to obscure than to enrich our understanding of the material relations and routines though which ‘progressive’ change might occur and endure in a given context – while side-stepping the challenge of how to evaluate progress itself in the current socio-political and economic landscape. Drawing on the work of Eve Sedgwick, John Dewey, Felix Ravaisson and others, this article asks whether critical work on habit can provide different, and potentially generative, analytical tools for understanding the contemporary ethical and material complexities of social transformation. I suggest that it habit’s double nature – its enabling of both compulsive repetition and creative becoming – that makes it a rich concept for addressing the propensity of harmful socio-political patterns to persist in the face of efforts to generate greater awareness of their damaging effects, as well as the material forms of automation and coordination on which meaningful societal transformation may depend. I also explore how bringing affect and habit together might productively refigure our understandings of ‘the present’ and ‘social progress’, as well as the available modes of sensing, instigating and responding to change. In turning to habit, then, the primary aim of this article is to examine how social and cultural theory might critically re-approach social change and progressive politics today.