Professionals' attitudes about victims of child sexual abuse: implications for collaborative child protection teams

In responding to victims of child sexual abuse, considerable attention has been given to multidisciplinary collaborative response teams. Recent evidence, however, suggests that team members may be divided by differences in attitudes towards victims and offenders and about the causes and consequences of abuse. This paper draws on a larger study of the various professionals who make up one child abuse response system in Newfoundland, Canada. In particular, the paper focuses on social workers, teachers and the police, and their views about the characteristics and credibility of sexual abuse victims, and the extent to which they attribute to the victim some responsibility for the abuse. Data for the study were collected in two stages: key informant interviews; and a survey of social workers, teachers and police. The analysis includes an interpretation of the role of gender, professional group membership and experience with cases. The most striking finding is the extent to which the child's age and behaviour appears to influence differentially attitudes about the victims' credibility. These differences complicate multidisciplinary collaborative initiatives since it would appear that those with the least real case experience, and the least knowledge about the relationship between abuse and behaviour, are the ones most likely to be the first point of contact for reports or disclosures.     

The changing dynamics of land conflict in the Brazilian Amazon: The rural-urban complex and its environmental implications

The Brazilian Amazon is an area of both serious environmental degradation and social instability. Despite billions of dollars spent on economic development and the rapid pace of urbanization, deforestation is extreme and violent land conflict is intense. Although episodes of conflict over land are common in Brazilian history, this paper focuses on agrarian issues that arose with the opening of the Amazon frontier in the 1970s. The paper argues that the nature of land conflict in the eastern Brazilian Amazon is dynamic, and proposes a two-stage model to illustrate how the struggle has evolved from an agrarian phenomenon to an organized resistance that is urban-based. Recognizing the interaction between cities and rural areas in the frontier reaches of the Brazilian Amazon is key to understanding the land struggle in the face of urbanization. The analytical framework deployed considers the transformation of the region from an agrarian frontier to an urbanized frontier, assessing the dynamic nature of the land struggle and examining the implications for land cover change.     

Solutions out of context: Examining the transfer of business concepts to nonprofit organizations

Small nonprofit organizations face a dilemma when applying management theories and techniques developed for large, private businesses. Research evidence suggests both benefits and problems associated with application of these techniques. To avoid potential problems, nonprofit managers commonly limit the selection and transfer of business techniques to those that solve specific problems or appear consistent with nonprofit orientations. One consequence is that business solutions often create unintended negative outcomes that are due to contextual differences between the two types of organizations. One possible solution to this dilemma is adoption of bundles, or configurations, of practices that introduce important contextual checks and balances along with the specific tools and techniques. We explore this option through a critical, participatory ethnographic analysis of a small nonprofit service organization.     

Individual Differences in the Contribution of Maternal Soothing to Infant Distress Reduction

This study investigates individual differences in the contribution of specific maternal regulatory behaviors to the mother‐infant dyad's regulation of infant distress response. Additionally, we examined the stability of infants' stress responses and the stability of specific maternal soothing behaviors. The sample included 128 mother‐infant dyads that were observed during an inoculation at 2 and 6 months. The average intensity of infant cry response showed modest stability across age only before controlling for the infant's general state of irritability, and the duration of crying was not stable. Of the 8 specific maternal regulatory behaviors studied, affection, touching, and vocalizing showed the strongest stability across infant age. Finally, an index of the contingency between maternal soothing and infant cry reduction at 2 months predicted shorter cry duration but not cry intensity at 6 months. The results of this study indicate that infants whose mothers showed a greater contribution to reducing their distress at 2 months showed a shorter duration of crying 4 months later. This suggests a possible longitudinal influence of maternal regulation on infants' distress responses.     

A QUESTION CLASSIFICATION SCALE FOR MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY

This paper proposes a Question Classification Scale (QCS) to permit more discrimination among the types of questions used in marriage and family therapy. The data base for the QCS development consisted of 503 family therapy questions drawn from tapes of eight family therapy experts and four trainees. The QCS was designed after studying question classification systems in philosophy, linguistics, educational research, and individual and family therapy. Each therapist-initiated question is coded in four ways, yielding a simple, yet multidimensional, picture of the therapist's questioning patterns. Future research potential of the QCS is discussed.     

TREATMENT ACCEPTABILITY OF ALTERNATIVE MARITAL THERAPIES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Client acceptability of treatment procedures has recently become a significant concern in the assessment of psychotherapeutic effectiveness (Kazdin, French & Sherick, 1981; Wolf, 1978). Formally, acceptability refers to the fairness, appropriateness and intrusiveness of the treatment procedure as judged by clients, lay persons and nonprofessionals (Kazdin, 1980a). Unfortunately, marital and family therapists have yet to utilize this criterion in an evaluation of their psychotherapeutic interventions. Consequently, the purpose of the present investigation was to examine the acceptability of four differing therapeutic models (psychoanalytic, behavioral, systems and eclectic) used in the treatment of marital discord.     

Preschool children's ability to identify and label emotions

The present study examined preschoolers' and adults' ability to identify and label the emotions of happiness, sadness, and anger when presented through either the face channel alone, the voice channel alone, or the face and voice channels together. Subjects were also asked to rate the intensity of the expression. The results revealed that children aged three to five years are able to accurately identify and label emotions of happy, sad, and angry regardless of channel presentation. Similar results were obtained for the adult group. While younger children (33 to 53 months of age) were equally accurate in identifying the three emotions, older children (54 to 68 months of age) and adults made more incorrect responses when identifying expressions of sadness. Intensity ratings also differed according to the age of the subject and the emotion being rated.Support for this research was from a grant by the National Science Foundatin (#01523721) to Nathan A. Fox. The authors would like to thank Professor A. Caron for providing the original videotape, Joyce Dinsmoor for her help in data collection and the staff of the Center for Young Children for their cooperation.     

The role of social and intellectual capital in achieving competitive advantage through enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software merges a firm's data, information flows and business processes into a single package. Vendors argue that ERP provides an extremely useful strategic resource to enhance competitiveness and make it possible for a firm to leverage its other resources more effectively and efficiently. In addition, they allege that ERP encourages a system-wide perspective that is a basis for collaboration and a systems orientation. However, an examination of ERP systems using criteria established in research on resource-based views of the firm and chaos/complexity theory indicates that these claims are overstated. Observation suggests that even if ERP is necessary to coordinate complicated, multifaceted operations, it is far from sufficient to promote a strong competitive position over the long term. Moreover, ERP systems fit best within mechanistic, clockwork organizations dominated by routine, highly programmed technologies and operations, yet it is the non-routine learning and change processes found in complex, self-organizing systems that enable firms to create distinctive competitive advantages from ERP outputs. ERP makes possible deep changes in relationships, culture, and behaviors that can be crucial sources of advantage in the knowledge economy, but the structures and cultures most able to achieve this level of change are a poor fit with ERP requirements. To reconcile this paradox, we propose a dual-core, loosely coupled organization that views ERP as an enabling technology to build and augment social and intellectual capital, rather than as an information technology (IT) solution for organizational inefficiencies. Propositions for using ERP as a foundation for social and intellectual capital formation are introduced. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

An overview of welfare reform in michigan

Welfare reform has swept across the nation. However, before Washington was able to develop a unified front, the state of Michigan was well on the way to reforming its own welfare system. As one of the forerunners in the welfare reform movement, Michigan is clearly a state worth watching. The author highlights major welfare reform efforts in Michigan throughout the 1990s and examines these efforts in light of concerns raised by child welfare advocates across the nation     

Mother‐Child Coregulation During Delay of Gratification at 30 Months

Fifty‐eight 30‐month‐old children and their mothers were observed during a task in which the child was asked to refrain from touching an attractive toy. Child and maternal regulatory strategies were independently coded in 5‐sec intervals. Consistent with past research, the ability to refrain from touching the toy was associated with less time orienting to the forbidden object and more time focusing on other stimuli. Mothers of children who refrained from touching the toy were more likely to use distraction as a technique to assist in their children's regulation than were mothers of touchers, whereas mothers of children who transgressed used more nondistracting strategies than did mothers of nontouchers. Analysis of contingent behaviors suggested that mothers and children effectively coregulated behavior during this challenging situation, as children and mothers followed one another's lead in the allocation of attention away from the toy. These findings indicate the benefits of proactive, rather than reactive, parental strategies for assisting child delay of gratification.