Go to the Hospital or Stay at Home? A Qualitative Study of Expected Hospital Decision Making Among Older African Americans With Advanced Heart Failure

To address the need for more information concerning hospital decision making, we conducted in-depth interviews among African Americans with heart failure and their family caregivers (n?=?11 dyads). Using a case scenario, we asked participants about their anticipated hospitalization decisions. Most patients indicated that they would seek care to avoid further deterioration or death from their worsening condition. Many family caregivers anticipated having an active influence on hospitalization decisions. Findings suggest that social workers should encourage the development of adequate home-based services, recognize diverse communication styles, and use this information to facilitate medical decision making by these patients and their caregivers.     

David: The first hour in the assessment and treatment of an adolescent

This paper presents an initial hour of therapy with 17 1/2 year old David, illustrating his distinctive experience, endowments, vulnerabilities and resiliencies. This first encounter permits a glimpse into typical adolescent conflicts and issues, how newer theoretical perspectives guide clinical thinking and technique, and the ways in which sociocultural forces intertwine with personal experience.in private practice.     

Genetic Contributions to Adolescents' Extrafamilial Social Interactions: Teachers, Best Friends, and Peers

The purpose of the present study was to investigate genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in adolescents' social interactions outside the family. We investigated sibling resemblance for adolescents' reports of interactions with best friends and teachers, and parents' perceptions of adolescents' peer groups in 701 same-sex adolescent sibling pairs aged 10-18, using a twin, full sibling, and step sibling design. Our goals were to assess the magnitude of sibling resemblance, and to disentangle resemblance due to shared genetic heritage from that due to shared environmental experiences. Substantial genetic influence was found for parents' perceptions of adolescents' peer groups. Adolescents' reports of positive interactions with teachers and best friends also showed significant genetic influence. In contrast, individual differences in adolescents' reports of negative interactions with teachers and best friends showed no significant genetic influence. In addition, most environmental influences for social interactions with teachers, best friends, and peers were largely of the nonshared variety, suggesting that growing up in the same family does not make adolescents similar in their extrafamilial social interactions.     

KONY 2012: Branding the Enemy—Activism Imagery in the Age of Social Media and the Political Brand

The KONY 2012 campaign, released by Invisible Children in early March 2012, is a carefully strategized program of destruction through promotion (aimed at destroying Joseph Kony’s image while making him famous). It is composed of a series of branded visual identity images, logos, text, and videos that are currently rewriting contemporary strategies for generating activism through social media. This article investigates the visual imagery and media of the KONY 2012 campaign and considers how the campaign team purposefully creates a subversive brandspace where individuals interact with the preformulated anti-Kony imagery that aids in the construction, communication, and maintenance of an antipathetic political brand identity. It also considers the implications of the iconoclastic visual rhetoric used by campaign designers to encourage the symbolic destruction of Kony’s image by making him notoriously iconic. Finally, it investigates the religious undertones of the campaign and its selective recruitment of followers through evangelical churches and organizations.     

The Impact of Multiple Risk Factors on Young Children's Cognitive and Behavioural Development

The paper maps out 10 risk factors measuring deficits in parent–child interaction, family–child interaction and the home environment. The prevalence of risk factor combinations is quantified using the UK Millennium Cohort Study data. In 2001, 28 per cent of families with young children were facing two or more risk factors at age 9–10 months old. Each combination of multiple risk factors accounted for a very small proportion of all MCS families. Specific risk factors were associated with particular developmental outcomes at age 5 and with changes from age 3 to age 5, but all leading to worse outcomes. The great diversity of risk‐factor combinations and their very small prevalence make the tasks of identifying such families and defining eligibility for support very difficult for policy‐makers. These results support the large body of policy literature advocating early intervention to improve children's development.     

A Global Review of New Social Risks and Responses for Children and their Families

Given global demographic and social trends, the need for new policy and program responses is essential. This article identifies and describes new and traditional social risks affecting children and their families in both industrialized and developing countries by region. Traditional risks continue in the developing as well as the industrialized countries but the extent and scale are very different and the problems are far more severe in developing countries. In addition, new risks are now evident and new policy responses are emerging. Attention to the new risks is increasing, with growing investment in services and policies facilitating the reconciliation of work and family life and non-traditional families. The citizens of many developing countries experience new risks as well, but their capacity to confront and address these risks is also more limited.     

Welfare attitudes and social class: the case of Hong Kong in comparative perspective

Based on a survey of Hong Kong residents, this article explores the attitudes towards the welfare state and whether or not there are significant differences between different social classes with regard to their approval of the welfare state. The findings were then compared with those for Sweden and the USA. The study shows that Hong Kong residents strongly approve of the welfare state. The strength of their support is similar to that in Sweden and is far stronger than in the USA. In Hong Kong, the influence of social class on attitudes towards the welfare state is negligible. In some cases, the privileged classes expressed greater approval for the welfare state than the underprivileged classes. This is in striking contrast to the experiences in Sweden and the USA where the underprivileged classes are more supportive of the welfare state than are the privileged classes.