Early childhood services: evolution or revolution?

This paper considers what progress has been made towards the development of a coherent national policy on services for young children under eight and their families. Since the election of a ‘new’ Labour government in 1997, services for children and families have been higher on the public agenda than at any time in living memory. Much has been achieved, through additional funding, expansion of services, and a more coordinated approach to service provision. But there is still a severe shortage of day care places for children under three, too few appropriately trained staff, a heavy reliance on short term funding, and no agreement on the overall policy on and purpose of early childhood services. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Semi-iterative missing value estimation

Several iterative methods for calculating the least squares estimates of missing values in a designed experiment are reviewed. Problems of slow convergence, unreliability and undue complexity are exposed. A new method is proposed which largely overcomes these problems.     

A Parametric Model for Detecting Hormetic Effects in Developmental Toxicity Studies

Hormetic effects have been observed at low exposure levels based on the dose-response pattern of data from developmental toxicity studies. This indicates that there might actually be a reduced risk of exhibiting toxic effects at low exposure levels. Hormesis implies the existence of a threshold dose level and there are dose-response models that include parameters that account for the threshold. We propose a function that introduces a parameter to account for hormesis. This function is a subset of the set of all functions that could represent a hormetic dose-response relationship at low exposure levels to toxic agents. We characterize the overall dose-response relationship with a piecewise function that consists of a hormetic u-shape curve at low dose levels and a logistic curve at high dose levels. We apply our model to a data set from an experiment conducted at the National Toxicology Program (NTP). We also use the beta-binomial distribution to model the litter response data. It can be seen by observing the structure of these data that current experimental designs for developmental studies employ a limited number of dose groups. These designs may not be satisfactory when the goal is to illustrate the existence of hormesis. In particular, increasing the number of low-level doses improves the power for detecting hormetic effects. Therefore, we also provide the results of simulations that were done to characterize the power of current designs in detecting hormesis and to demonstrate how this power can be improved upon by altering these designs with the addition of only a few low exposure levels.     

调节的正义和分配的正义

人们批评罗尔斯(Rawls)的正义论,说它要求把诸如收入和财富这样的基本生活要素纳入分配过程,从而使最少受惠者的利益得到最大的改善,就是说,它不管是否“每个人造出适合自己睡的床”。①正如德沃京(Dwokin)所指出的那样,正是这种理论,依据基本生活品的公平分配,才是“有同情心的企图而冷漠的馈赠”。本文认为,“幸运的平等主义者们”——正如安德森(ElizabethAnderson)猛烈攻击的那样——他们忽略了罗尔斯理论的两个基本特征:在分配正义中根据“纯粹程序正义”所起的作用;调节的正义和分配的正义之间的区别。当人们考虑这些特征时,罗尔斯的理论比“幸运的平等主义”看起来更为合理。     

The intergenerational transmission of maternal discipline and standards for behavior

Mothers and grandmothers of 3- to 5-year-olds rated their frequency of use of five disciplinary techniques – physical punishment, withdrawal of love, explanation, material reward, and praise, described how they would react in a variety of disciplinary situations, and rated how stringent they were in demanding appropriate behavior in the areas of obedience, honesty, helping, and control of aggression. Mothers were asked to respond with reference to their child, and grandmothers with reference to their daughter when she was between 3 and 5 years of age. There was a significant correlation between mothers and grandmothers in their use of physical punishment and material reward. Mothers of girls who were categorized as power assertive in their responses to disciplinary situations had mothers who were also power assertive. There was no relationship between mothers and grandmothers in the standards they set for behavior. It is argued that discipline techniques are generally learned in the privacy of the home while standards are more likely to evolve after a variety of life experiences and that it is this fact that accounts for the relationship between mothers and grandmothers in the former area and not the latter.     

'Thoughtful' practice: child care social work and the role of case discussion

Since the publication of Lord Laming’s inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbé there have been a number of insightful and thoughtful papers into the professional context and circumstances that surrounded this tragedy. Those papers highlight the insufficient thought given to the psychosocial dimensions of Victoria’s situation, their impact on professional practice and the support needs of practitioners. This paper explores the tensions between ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’ in contemporary practice and draws on psychodynamic concepts to inform our understanding of why individuals and organizations behave in repetitiously compulsive ways. A case discussion model is outlined and its potential for addressing the psychodynamic demands facing practitioners and front‐line managers is considered.