Family support: A review of the literature on families of adolescents with disabilities

ABSTRACT

For all youth, adolescence is a time of great change, marked by multiple transitions. For those with disabilities, these transitions can be especially challenging for the youth and their families. Although families of adolescents with disabilities often require support, it is unclear what types of assistance are most helpful. To understand the responsibilities of and, correspondingly, supports needed for parents and siblings, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature review. Specifically, the authors examined the literature to identify the supports that families provide to their adolescent relatives with disabilities, the impacts of caring for an adolescent relative with a disability, and the assistance that families receive. The authors conclude by discussing implications for future research about family support.     

Organizational-level interventions to reduce occupational stressors

Occupational stress research continues to grow, and is increasingly being used to inform national policy on worker health and well-being. Most models of occupational stress emphasize notions of person-environment fit. Two approaches for intervention to minimize adverse consequences of occupational stress follow from such models. One emphasizes the strengthening and enhancement of indwiduals and their resources, the other emphasizes the reduction ofcommon workplace-based sources ofoccupational stress. This paper reviews 10 organizational-level interventions to reduce stress at work which have been examined in various field studies. These interventions were generally found to have positive effects, and, given the limited success of individual-level interventions in addressing occupational sources of stress, should be encouraged.     

Looking Inwards,Looking Outwards: Dismantling the “Berlin Wall” Between Health and Social Services?

This paper argues that at a time when policy guidance urged closer collaboration and joint working between health and social services, the long-established cultural and professional gaps were widening and deteriorating. Drawing on data from four research sites, the paper argues that the deterioration was rooted principally in practitioners' preoccupations with changes within their own organizations and daily work, resulting from a major period of change in both health and social services, which, ironically, was at the expense of the joint working which the "Caring for People" reforms required. As the policy environment changes again, under the Labour government, it is likely that health and social care practitioners will be working within further organizational turbulence and change. It will be crucial that those changes are managed in such a way that they avoid the very real danger of compounding the problems which our respondents identified.     

Evidence‐based Management in Practice: Opening up the Decision Process,Decision‐maker and Context

Evidence‐based management (EBM) has been subject to a number of persuasive critiques in recent years. Concerns have been raised that: EBM over‐privileges rationality as a basis for decision‐making; ‘scientific’ evidence is insufficient and incomplete as a basis for management practice; understanding of how EBM actually plays out in practice is limited; and, although ideas were originally taken from evidence‐based medicine, individual‐situated expertise has been forgotten in the transfer. To address these concerns, the authors adopted an approach of ‘opening up’ the decision process, the decision‐maker and the context (Langley et al. ( 1995 ). ‘Opening up decision making: the view from the black stool’, Organization Science, 6, pp. 260–279). The empirical investigation focuses on an EBM decision process involving an operations management problem in a hospital emergency department in Australia. Based on interview and archival research, it describes how an EBM decision process was enacted by a physician manager. It identifies the role of ‘fit’ between the decision‐maker and the organizational context in enabling an evidence‐based process and develops insights for EBM theory and practice.     

Interracial Marriage Trends and Migration Patterns: An Analysis of LAFANS 2000

We hypothesized that interracial married couples will migrate more than intraracial married couples. We focus on three mechanisms (education, social support, and discrimination) that provide explanations for interracial couples to migrate more than interracial couples. The theoretical framework included the “Push-Pull” theory and perspective on social network ties and how they link to couples migration patterns. We used information gathered in a wave of the survey conducted in 2000 for the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study. We used this survey and analyzed in a logistic regression model how the three mechanisms described above affect interracial married couples and migration patterns. The results provide a positive direction but did not provide a statistical significant due to small sample size. In conclusion, we find support from all three mechanisms for interracial marriage couples to have higher possibility for migration. Future implications should examine divorce rate and cohabitation to provide a higher migration pattern with interracial married couples.     

Musical Ties That Bind: Nostalgia,Affect, and Heritage in Festival Narratives

Affective heritage embracement, a collective narrative of nostalgia, is identified at two popular music festivals. “MusicFest” embraces a tradition of “Red Dirt” country music through performance (music festival), whereas the “Walnut Valley Festival” embraces a bluegrass/folk musical heritage through performance and participation (musicians' festival). The symbolic importance of musical interaction is explored to highlight the experienced emotionality that leads to the affective ties that bind these otherwise temporary communities. This collective narrative reveals the various functions of nostalgia wherein collective sentiment both reflects and creates the perceived authentic experiences of festival attendees.     

Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) Residents Have a False Sense of Security That Could Jeopardize Their Safety in a Disaster

High-rise apartments bring unique challenges in emergency situations. To better understand the needs of apartment-dwelling seniors in emergency situations and potential sources of support available, a novel collaborative community development approach was used with seniors living in a naturally occurring retirement community (NORC) in London, Ontario, Canada (N = 2500; mean ± SD age = 79 ± 9.53 years). A surprising finding was a false sense of security, with seniors expecting that management would take care of all needs. This finding reinforces the critical need for better public messaging for seniors, as well as targeted emergency management plans for frailer older individuals living in the community.