Issues of shared parenting of LGBTQ children and youth in foster care: preparing foster parents for new roles

Foster parents have increasingly assumed new and challenging roles during the past decade. Meeting the developmental, attachment, and grieving needs of children and youth in out of home care is challenging by itself, but can become even more difficult with the issues that arise when the child is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (LGBTQ). Preservice and in-service foster parent training programs can strengthen shared parenting skills by focusing on the universal critical issues of safety, well being, and permanence for children and youth in foster care. This article will focus on these skill areas: (1) sharing parenting to promote healthy growth and development of LGBTQ youth in foster care, (2) threats to safety of LGBTQ youth in foster care, and (3) general challenges and strategies for preparing foster parents of LGBTQ youth to build support systems.     

中美老人对专业帮助服务的态度比较研究

文章本着探索中国老人和美国老人对使用以咨询为基础的服务的不同态度的目的,以150位中国老人和145位美国老人为样本,采用"害怕亲近量表"调查了中美老年人对专业帮助服务态度的现状,比较了中美老年人对专业帮助服务所持态度的不同特点。结果发现:相较美国老人,中国老人对专业帮助的态度更不积极;不同的因素影响着中国老人和美国老人对帮助服务的信心。     

Applying Lee-Carter under conditions of variable mortality decline

The Lee-Carter method of mortality forecasting assumes an invariant age component and most applications have adopted a linear time component. The use of the method with Australian data is compromised by significant departures from linearity in the time component and changes over time in the age component. We modify the method to adjust the time component to reproduce the age distribution of deaths, rather than total deaths, and to determine the optimal fitting period in order to address non-linearity in the time component. In the Australian case the modification has the added advantage that the assumption of invariance is better met. For Australian data, the modifications result in higher forecast life expectancy than the original Lee-Carter method and official projections, and a 50 per cent reduction in forecast error. The model is also expanded to take account of age-time interactions by incorporating additional terms, but these are not readily incorporated into forecasts.     

The “Zen Lady” An interview with Insoo Kim Berg

In May this year, Insoo Kim Berg was a visiting professor at Southern Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Adelaide. Heather Hayes spoke with Insoo about her work at the Brief Family Therapy Center, Milwaukee, where she is a co-director.     

Conceptualising Male Violence against Female Partners: Political Implications of Therapeutic Responses

This paper examines some political implications of particular therapeutic/non-legal responses to male violence against female partners. In particular, a critique of the conceptualisation of violence as a problem of conflict is made. It is emphasised that male violence is a crime and that divergent responses are at risk of losing political impact and may well result in further oppression of women.     

The uses and users of population projections in Australia

It is widely recognized that population projections are increasingly used in formulating policy in many public and private sectors. However, little information exists on the nature of the projections or their users. This paper reports the results of a survey conducted to rectify this situation. The results confirm that the applications of projections are very broad and that the prime area of increase has been in small-area projections. At this level many users make their own projections rather than use official projections and the paper reviews the methodology used to make these projections. A number of suggestions are made for improving communication between national and subnational producers and local users. We would like to thank the Australian Population Association, and in particular the Secretary, Dianne Rudd, for providing us with address labels of members of the Association. We would also like to thank the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in particular Shail Jain, for advice on the development of the questionnaire. The comments of the two anonymous referees were very helpful. Finally we wish to thank our respondents for their co-operation, and especially those who wrote to encourage us in this work.     

Inside the Black Box: what constitutes a day in a residential treatment centre?

Residential Treatment Centres (RTCs) provide 24-hour care and mental health services to young people, many of whom are referred from county departments that oversee services to young people involved with child welfare services, mental health services and corrections. While RTCs are required to provide mental health services to young people, the regulations governing these programmes have few specific requirements about the process, content or duration of treatment. Therefore, many questions have arisen about what a typical RTC day looks like and whether it differs among providers or differs based on the severity or type of the young person's mental-health related behaviours and symptoms. This study conducted interviews with RTC providers in the State of Colorado on this topic. Most RTC services were relatively uniform across case types within each RTC. It appears that with a few exceptions, a similar set of services is provided to all young people, regardless of their problems.     

LETTING DOWN THE TEAM? SOCIAL EFFECTS OF TEAM INCENTIVES

This paper estimates social effects of incentivizing people in teams. In three field experiments featuring exogenous team formation and opportunities for repeated social interactions, we find large team effects that operate through social channels. In particular, assignment to a team treatment increases productivity by 9%–17% relative to an individual incentive treatment, even though the individual incentive yields a higher private return. Further, we find that in a choice treatment individuals overwhelmingly prefer the individual incentive to the team incentive, despite the latter being more effective. These results are most consistent with the team effects operating through guilt or social pressure as opposed to pure altruism.