Financial Abuse of Older People by a Family Member: A Difficult Terrain for Service Providers in Australia

Financial abuse by a family member is the most common form of abuse experienced by older Australians, and early intervention is required. National online surveys of 228 chief executive officers and 214 aged care service providers found that, while they were well placed to recognize financial abuse, it was often difficult to intervene successfully. Problems providers encountered included difficulties in detecting abuse, the need for consent before they could take action, the risk that the abusive family member would withdraw the client from the service, and a lack of resources to deal with the complexities inherent in situations of financial abuse.     

Work-Family Conflict Among Dual-Earners: Are Partner,Family, and Friends Resources or Liabilities?

Using dyadic data from a random sample of dual-earner couples from an upper Midwestern city in the US (N?=?99), this study examined how each partner’s strain and support from family, partner, and friends relate to work-family conflict. The findings showed several significant relationships. Among men, friend support was associated with lower work-to-family conflict and higher family-to-work conflict, whereas partner support was related to lower family-to-work conflict. Partner strain was associated with work-to-family conflict among women and family-to-work conflict among men. Men’s friend support was related to less work-to-family conflict among women, and women’s family support was associated with less family-to-work conflict among men. Men’s friend strain was associated with higher family-to-work conflict among women. The implications of these findings were discussed, with an eye towards identifying theoretical and practical implications of this study.     

Defining Social Listening: Recognizing an Emerging Dimension of Listening

Social listening occurs in a variety of mediated contexts, but it has yet to be clearly defined in the realm of communication and listening studies. This report explores social listening as a developing listening type extending from the existing taxonomy of listening, posits a definition of its meaning, evaluates its role in organizational and interpersonal communication, and discusses its value as an additional listening dimension. Based on a review and synthesis of literature across multiple fields of study, we describe social listening as a dimension of listening comprising a blend of purposes complementary to the existing appreciative, comprehensive, critical, discriminative, and therapeutic listening types discussed in Wolvin and Coakley’s (1993) listening taxonomy. As mediated communication continuously evolves within the communication landscape, the urgency to understand social listening will surely increase. With this in mind, we introduce and define social listening as an emerging type of listening and as a means of attaining interpersonal information and social intelligence that can empower relationships and influence the way we listen to and communicate with one another through increasingly popular mediated channels.     

CONSTRUCTING A HEALTH AND SOCIAL INDICATOR FRAMEWORK FOR INDIGENOUS COMMUNITY HEALTH RESEARCH

Health and social indicators that capture the distinct historical, social, and cultural contexts of Indigenous communities can play an important role in informing the planning and delivery of community interventions. There is currently considerable interest in cataloguing and vetting meaningful community-level health and social indicators that could be applied to research and health promotion activities in Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, inclusive of conventional indicators as well as measures developed specifically for use in or with Indigenous communities. To avoid haphazard selection of indicators, and to assure the comprehensiveness and relevance of any given set of indicators, a framework that can accommodate and conceptually classify indicators representing a full range of domains is required. We report here on the development of a conceptual framework, by which Indigenous community indicators, and more general community-level social indicators, can be sorted, catalogued, and systematically classified within four hierarchical levels. The indicator framework was developed across Canada, Australia and New Zealand in consultation with academic researchers and Indigenous community stakeholders, building from established health and social indicator systems. The Indigenous indicator framework permits Indigenous communities, public health researchers, and funding agencies to compare and select the most appropriate indicators for application in specific contexts from the multitude of existing indicators.     

Veteran Status,Race‐Ethnicity,and Marriage Among Fragile Families

We used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 2,679 ) to examine the impact of men's past military service on the likelihood that a couple will marry within 5 years of a nonmarital birth. Logistic regression analyses showed that men's past military service increased marriage odds by 54% for couples with Black fathers even after controlling for potential mediators. But veteran status had no effect on couples with White or Hispanic fathers. As a result, the large Black‐White gap in postbirth marriage evident among couples with civilian fathers did not exist among couples with veteran fathers. Our findings bolster other evidence that military service exerts lasting and unique pro‐marriage effects on Blacks.     

Disrupting Power and Privilege in Couples Therapy

Power disparities underlie many of the issues that couples bring for therapy. People in relationships are not equal; often one partner is systematically conferred unearned advantage and dominance. This article synthesizes results from three qualitative research studies to propose a social justice approach for clinical practice with couples. Interventions are suggested to keep issues of power and privilege a central focus while addressing the ordinary issues partners present for therapy.

Trends in Employee Wage and Health Insurance Compensation for Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance (ESI) Coverage

Health insurance coverage continues to be an important benefit of employment and employer-sponsored insurance is the most prominent form of health coverage in the US. We examine trends in both employer and employee contributions to the costs of health insurance premium between 2002 and 2005 and assess these contributions relative to changes in worker wages. We do this for the US overall and for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. We found a significant increase of 15.5% in the share of total compensation going toward health benefits (from 12.3–14.2%) for workers with individual coverage and an increase of 13.5% (from 20.6–23.4%) for workers with family coverage. Wages over this time period decreased 3.0% for workers with individual coverage and increased 0.8% for workers with family coverage.     

A Sex Difference in Mental Rotation in Infants: Convergent Evidence

Quinn and Liben (2008) reported a sex difference on a mental rotation task in which 3‐ to 4‐month‐olds were familiarized with a shape in different rotations and then tested with a novel rotation of the familiar shape and its mirror image. As a group, males but not females showed a significant preference for the mirror image, a pattern paralleled at the individual level (with most males but less than half the females showing the preference). Experiment 1 examined a possible explanation for this performance difference, namely, that females were more sensitive to the angular differences in the familiarized shape. Three‐ to 4‐month‐olds were given a discrimination task involving familiarization with a shape at a given rotation and preference testing with the shape in the familiarized versus a novel rotation. Females and males preferred the novel rotation, with no sex difference observed. This finding did not provide support for the suggestion that the sex difference in mental rotation is explained by differential sensitivity to angular rotation. Experiment 2 revealed that the sex difference in mental rotation is observed in 6‐ to 7‐month‐olds and 9‐ to 10‐month‐olds, suggesting that a sex difference in mental rotation is present at multiple ages during infancy.     

A Place for Technology in Parent Education: An Exploratory Study of Parent Perceptions

The current study sought to identify what parents would perceive to be helpful in terms of including technology topics in parent education programs, rather than assuming what would be best for parents. Parents were recruited for participation from a western state in the United States between 2012 and 2013. A qualitative approach was used to analyze parental responses (N?=?168) regarding what topics/areas would be beneficial if they attended an educational offering relating to teens and technology. Parents indicated they wanted specific direction and skills relating to the practice of implementing parental mediation, and information about staying current with the technology trends. Other findings focused on the difficulty of getting parents to commit to such education.     

Dementia and Guardianship: Challenges in Social Work Practice

Decision-making within the context of dementia can be an uncertain and problematic process. This study critically examined challenges in social work practice in instances where a legal alternative decision-maker through guardianship proceedings was perceived as necessary. Theoretical perspectives from social constructionism underpinned the research. Five qualitative case studies were investigated. A thematic network analysis showed that the situations were constantly evolving and different players participated by bringing their own perspectives. In this process alliances were formed that reflected underlying dynamics of power. Contested issues included varied understandings of dementia and capacity, and differing constructions of risk, protection, and responsibility. The implications for practice are discussed with social work being well placed to make an important contribution through its traditional roles of negotiation, interpretation, and mediation between those who have discursive rights and those who do not. Ethical reasoning as a basis for decision-making was also of significance.