Mending the Levee: How Supernaturally Anchored Conceptions of the Person Impact on Trauma Perception and Healing among Children (Cases from Madagascar and Nepal)

When dealing with children and youth who experience distressing events, psychosocial diagnostics and healing programmes principally resort to biomedical models. Children are often viewed as individualised ‘victims’ suffering from trauma and ‘in need’ of outside help. Highlighting case studies from Madagascar and Nepal, this article argues that the biomedical approach to trauma would be strengthened by a concomitant analysis of social networks, including the perceived relations with the supernatural. The various tandems of family and kin relationships, the living and the dead, constitute not only a social ‘levee’ breached by distressing events, but also the locus around which social relations are rebuilt.     

Social work supervision of young people

This paper summarizes findings on 50 teenagers supervised by local authority social services (work) departments. Interviews were held with social workers, young people and parents at the start of intervention and about a year later. Pre-tests and post-tests were also used to complement other statistical and qualitative data. After identifying the main reasons for the teenagers being on formal or informal supervision, the paper moves on to discuss the process, content and outcome of supervision as perceived by each of the three key actors. It also outlines what the young people and their parents found positive and helpful about supervision. Finally the paper demonstrates that forms of help and control need not be opposites and that social workers can help some very troubled teenagers. However, in order for services to have an impact, they have to be deployed as part of a package rather than as alternatives.     

Infant Recognition of Hebrew Vocalic Word Patterns

The ability of infants to recognize phonotactic patterns in their native language is widely acknowledged. However, the specific ability of infants to recognize patterns created by nonadjacent vowels in words has seldom been investigated. In Semitic languages such as Hebrew, groups of multisyllabic words are identical in their nonadjacent vowel sequences and stress position but differ in the consonants interposed between the vowels. The goals of this study were to assess whether infants learning Hebrew show a preference for (1) a nonadjacent vocalic pattern or template, common in Hebrew nouns (CéCeC), over a nonattested nonadjacent vocalic pattern (CóCoC), and (2) a nonadjacent vocalic pattern common in Hebrew words (CaCóC) over an existing but less common pattern (CaCéC). Twenty Hebrew‐learning infants aged 8 to 11 months were presented with lists of nonsense words featuring the first two patterns (Experiment 1), and 20 were presented with nonsense words featuring the second two patterns (Experiment 2). The results showed longer listening to CéCeC than to CóCoC lists and to CaCóC than to CaCéC lists, suggesting that infants recognized the common nonadjacent vocalic patterns in both cases. The study thus demonstrates that Hebrew‐learning infants are able to disregard the intervening consonants within words and generalize their vocalic pattern to previously unheard nonwords, whether this pattern includes identical or different vowels and regardless of the rhythmic pattern of the word (trochaic or iambic). Analysis of the occurrence of the relevant vowel patterns in input speech in three Hebrew corpora (two addressed to children and one to adults) suggests that exposure to these patterns in words underlies the infants' preferences.     

Social Work in a Managed Care Environment

Managed care has created a new service environment, eliminating distinctions that have sustained social work ideology and the profession throughout its history. This paper reviews important features of managed care, considers changes it has brought to practice ideology, the practitioner/client relationship, and the practice environment, including social work employment. The paper discusses the new opportunities, challenges and problems that have emerged with this approach.
While social workers should not embrace managed care, they should not run from it or blindly oppose it. They need to aggressively pursue it, fighting its major drawbacks, while adapting to a competitive market place. Given the current managed care market, the social work profession is now in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills, and available at the right price. It must now take on a leadership role to maintain its competitive position, protect its clients and insure quality practice.     

Diversity in the American Military

Sociological Forum -