A recent look at the factors influencing workforce retention in public child welfare

Consistency of services to children and their families continues to be an ongoing problem in public child welfare agencies. Worker turnover is high, thus affecting the availability of a well trained, experienced workforce. It is critical that we continue to explore the factors associated with worker turnover and retention in public child welfare agencies. Such knowledge will allow us to determine the needs of workers, administrators, and the agency in general, in an effort to create an environment that will result in worker retention, and a better quality of services. Children and their families will be major benefactors of such knowledge as the consistency and quality of services will be enhanced. Existing research has found that outcomes for families and children are affected by the workload and training of frontline workers, and organizational characteristics (GAO, 2003, NASW, 2004, and Milner, 2003). This study describes personal and organizational factors relative to worker retention for public child welfare workers in the northwest corridor of Georgia.     

Victim of and witness to violence: an interactional perspective on mothers' perceptions of children exposed to intimate partner violence

This article reports a study of how mothers perceive the effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy and children's exposure to IPV: (a) Do interactional aspects of IPV have a negative impact on the fetus during pregnancy or on the newborn baby? and (b) Is there a relationship between interactional aspects of IPV and (a) children's risk of being exposed to IPV and (b) the age of the child when at risk for exposure to IPV? A representative sample of 137 IPV help-seeking mothers in Norway was interviewed. Severity of physical IPV and injury from sexual IPV increased the risk of consequences to the fetus. Frequency of physical and psychological IPV increased the likelihood of children's exposure. Duration of the partnership increased the risk of children's exposure to physical and sexual IPV. Finally, there was a negative linear association between children's age when exposed for the first time and frequency of physical and psychological IPV.     

Creeping-In als neues Instrument des Erwerbs von Unternehmenskontrollrechten ?C Taktische Meisterleistung oder unkalkulierbares Risiko?

A modern method for (partial) acquisitions is the so called creeping-in tactic. In this procedure the acquirer uses cash settled equity swaps to undermine WpHG notification requirements systematically until she holds at least 30% of the voting rights in the target company. In this case the acquirer has the obligation to submit a mandatory takeover bid for the remaining outstanding shares. In many cases acquirers are not interested in a complete acquisition of the target company but rather want to make use of low shareholder presence levels during the general assembly and therefore have the opportunity to significantly influence fundamental decisions like, e.g. allocation of the net income, corporate actions etc. The mandatory takeover bid has to be equal at least to the three months average share price. At first glance, this involves a high risk of an unintentional acceptance by the targets?? shareholders. The goal of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of the mandatory takeover bid. We show that with a temporal shift of the mandatory takeover bid to a point in time when the share price is above the three months average share price an unintentional acceptance is virtually impossible. In a logit-regression company specific context factors for the acceptance risk are indentified and rejected.     

On the Optimality of Estimating the Tail Index and a Naive Estimator

Using a straightforward estimator for estimating the tail index of a distribution we illustrate the inherent difficulties of this problem. We prove strong and weak consistencies and central limit theorems for our naive estimator, and discuss its various rates of convergence under different conditions. We argue that, while optimal rates of convergence do exist under various conditions for a number of estimators of the tail index, the notion of an optimal sequence for this problem is bound to run into unsurmountable difficulties.     

The impact of a social systems scientist on a country

The process of evaluation of the impact of a social systems scientist (S³) on a country can be framed as a play (the impact of a person) within a play (the inquiry). Impact can be focused in terms of the social structure (stage), roles involved, change and the diffusion processes that characterize the development of the ‘plays’. Different meanings of the terms social systems science and country are given depending on the intentions, knowledge and context of the inquiry. A person is usually evaluated by first selecting a role through which he is viewed. Selection of the role is not a neutral decision. The main roles associated with S³ and Russell Ackoff were scientist, educator, consultant-adviser, planner-designer, social reformer, social philosopher, entertainer and preacher. A strong criterion for evaluation could be the degree of participation of a person in the development of a paradigm, ideal or myth and its nurturing institution.     

D-optimal weighted paired comparison designs

As a generalization of the paired comparison designs, the experimental design which considers the weighted difference between responses is studied. D-optimal designs are constructed for a model with main effects and first-order interactions. The experimental region is a hypercube or a hypersphere.     

中学思想品德教育中实施人文教育要坚守的理念

由于应试教育长期的存在,在中学进行人文教育是一项很困难的事情。要想切实有效地贯彻实施,就要求每个教育工作者,必须以先进的、科学的教育理论做指导,确立、形成正确的教育理念,并时刻坚守。因而,坚守正确的教育理念是一项十分艰巨的事情,是值得每个教育工作者探讨的事情。     

Effects of government policies on the work of home care personnel and their occupational health and safety

The health sector in Québec (Canada) is dealing with profound macro-economic and macro-organizational changes. This article is interested in the impact of these changes on the work of home health aides (HHAs) and home care nurses and their occupational health and safety (OHS). The study was carried out in the home care services (HCS) of four local community service centres (CLSC) with different organizational characteristics. It is based on an analysis by triangulation of 66 individual and group interviews, 22 observed workdays and 35 observed multidisciplinary or professional meetings, as well as on administrative documents. HHAs are experiencing an erosion of their job because the relational and affective aspects of their work are disappearing. This may be due to an increase in their physical workload, leading to an increase in musculoskeletal problems and, to a lesser extent, in psychological health problems. Nurses are seeing an increase in the volume of invisible work that they have to do, which also has the effect of decreasing the relational aspects of their activity. The increasingly numerous psychological health problems are the consequence of this change in their profession. This study also shows that managers' decisions at the local level can reduce or increase the work constraints of HHAs and nurses. Examples of good practices for HHAs are the stabilization of clienteles and the possibility of organizing their itinerary, while for nurses, it is in how clientele follow-up tools are implemented. This article discusses the effects of government policies and decisions on the work and OHS of home care personnel. To address this subject, we use a specific analysis of the workload of home health aides (HHAs) and nurses. We will show the relationships between managers' organizational choices to respond to governmental constraints and the resulting work changes. We will also look at their consequences on occupational health and safety (OHS) and on the work of different personnel.