The experience of trauma recovery: a qualitative study of participants in the Women Recovering from Abuse Program (WRAP)

The efficacy of intensive group treatment programs for child maltreatment has been established. The aim of this qualitative study was to understand how women with a history of child maltreatment experienced the Women Recovering from Abuse Program (WRAP), an existing intensive group treatment program. Seven women were interviewed following their participation in WRAP. Three themes emerged: Breaking Trauma-Based Patterns, Doing Therapy, and The Healing Journey as a Continuous Process. These findings deepen our understanding about how participants view the recovery process. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Do-It-Yourself Social Policy: Searching for a New Paradigm?

One of the most significant trends of recent decades has been the growing importance of do-it-yourself social policy: i.e. individuals constructing their own welfare mix both within the public sector and in private markets. This paper argues that this challenges the traditional top-down bias of social policy studies and requires a shift of focus within the discipline. The implications for normative theory, research strategy and policy analysis are explored. Some of the arguments for and against choice as a guiding principle are sketched out; some existing research on benefit take-up and choice in education and health is reviewed and the case for moving away from the economist's simple model of rationality is put forward. Finally, we argue, there should be more emphasis in social policy on developing a better understanding of the way in which individuals take their decisions, the context of public policy within which they act and the interaction between the two.     

Activation as a Common Framework for Social Policies towards Lone Parents

This article compares recent social policy reforms in respect of lone-parent families in three different national contexts: France, the Netherlands and the UK. In all three countries there is an increasing focus on activation policies to promote employment among lone parents. The authors examine whether this common framework of activation has led to a policy convergence across these three countries.     

AIDS Risk Behaviors among American and Australian Homeless Youth

We examined HIV/AIDS risk behaviors among homeless youth in cross-national data collected in Melbourne, Australia ( n = 398), and Los Angeles, California ( n = 498). Using structural equation modeling, we found that the Australian youth reported greater involvement in AIDS risk behaviors than the American youth and the Australian youth were more involved in intervening risk factors that promote risk behaviors and less involved with protective factors that reduce risk behaviors. Youth reporting the highest rates of delinquent behaviors also had peers engaging in delinquent acts, used alcohol and marijuana, and were more likely to utilize social services. These findings underscore the importance of having a service sector that is able to adequately address the needs of homeless youth .     

Predicting Presence and Level of Nonresident Fathers' Involvement in Infants' Lives: Mothers' Perspective

A nonresident father's involvement can be divided into two components: presence (if a father is involved in his child's life) and level (how much he is involved). Guided by role saliency theory, this study simultaneously examined predictors of these two components. Data were drawn from 1,215 mothers of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression models revealed that the coparental relationship had different influences on the presence and level of father involvement. Although relationship status, quality, and conflict influenced presence of father's involvement, parents' positive relationship was the major factor that predicted level of involvement.     

Framing Child Sexual Abuse: A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Newspaper and Television Coverage, 2002–2012

ABSTRACT

The way in which the news media frame child sexual abuse can influence public perception. This content analysis of the child sexual abuse coverage of eight national news organizations in the United States from 2002 to 2012 includes the two dominant events of the Catholic Church and Pennsylvania State University child sexual abuse scandals. Census and systematic stratified sampling techniques were applied to articles obtained from the Lexis/Nexis Academic database, resulting in a sample of 503 articles. Intercoder reliability was ensured by double coding a randomly selected sample. Study findings indicate a shift in the attribution of responsibility of child sexual abuse among news organizations over the past decade from an individual-level problem with individual-level solutions to a societal-level problem with institutional culpability. Nevertheless, individual-level solutions continue to be framed as the best possible solution.     

THE SUPERVISED STATE

This article addresses an arresting conjuncture: the fact that the international community's involvement in states' affairs frequently coalesces around a state's management of internal difference. I outline striking parallels in the ways relations between supranational bodies, some European states, and their minorities were reconfigured in two post-imperial moments: the decade following the Great War and the present period of post-socialist transformation. In both periods supranational bodies developed regimes of supervision whose rationale and focus were minority rights and the state's governance of difference. Examining a figure I call “the supervised state,” I reflect on its implications for theorisations of state and sovereignty. I place these moments of intensified supervision of selected states within a larger history of supranational scrutiny and a political landscape that entailed a spectrum of sovereignties.     

A room with a view: a metaphor analysis of Vietnamese women’s representations of living with depression using photo elicitation

Depression is complex and it is known that how people name and give meaning to this experience when they are from cross cultural backgrounds differs to that of dominant Anglo cultures. Yet surprisingly very little is known about the naming and meaning-making conventions particularly for Vietnamese communities. In Anglo cultures, people commonly describe their experiences of depression as ‘travelling through dark tunnels toward a light’; ‘climbing out of a hole’; ‘a black dog’, and the ‘descent of a black cloud’. These metaphoric representations provide us with visual messages and new meanings about the experience of depression and how it impacts individuals. In this article, we describe a study that aimed to examine if a photo elicitation method could provide a group of women from Vietnamese backgrounds with another language set by which to represent their experience of depression in the face-to-face interview context. Women were provided with a digital camera and asked to take a minimum of 10 photos about their everyday experiences of living with depression. Recruitment and face-to-face interviews were completed with an interpreter already known to participants employed at the community health centre. Participants were asked to select five key photos for discussion within the interpreted interview. In the following article, a metaphor analysis is presented to reflect on how the photos enabled further insight into Vietnamese women’s representations of living with depression and examine the application of this participatory visual method for cross cultural research settings.