Parenting capacity

We describe an approach to the assessment of parenting for families in which child abuse has been established to have occurred. Neither the category of abuse nor its physical severity adequately predicts the future wellbeing or safety of an abused child. The critical variable in determining the child's future is the level of disturbance in parenting. We argue against the most common approach to assessments of parenting, which is to generate a non‐hierarchical list of issues with the emphasis on relatively concrete and readily measurable dimensions such as social support, parental knowledge about parenting and the child's developmental status. We enhance the standard approach to assessment by organizing it around parenting capacity. We do not attempt to operationalize parenting capacity, de?ning it as the parents' ability to empathically understand and give priority to their child's needs. Adequate parenting requires that the parents be able to meet the challenges posed by their particular child's temperament and development (which may be shaped by the abusive experience) and also to accept and be prepared to address their own intrinsic characteristics which impede their parenting capacity. Parenting capacity is more dif?cult to assess than the more concrete and commonly measured aspects of parenting, but we argue that its assessment should be central to child protection management decisions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Symbolic victory and political reality in the southern textile industry: The meaning of the J. P. Stevens settlement for southern labor relations

In October, 1980, J. P. Stevens & Company ended a long, bitter labor-management battle by signing a contract with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). Labor hailed the victory as its long-delayed break-through for workers in the traditionally nonunion, low-wage industries of the South. This paper assesses the importance of the Stevens/ACTWU settlement for Stevens, the textile industry, and the changing Southern economy. When the ACTWU victory is examined in this light, it becomes clear that the impact of the settlement is far more limited than is generally believed.     

Family Therapy for Chronic Childhood Asthma†

Family therapy has been increasingly advocated in the management of chronic severe childhood asthma. At the Adelaide Children's Hospital we are currently engaged in a trial of family therapy in chronic childhood asthma. Effectiveness of family therapy is judged with a twelve-month follow-up on reduction of symptoms, drug use, emergency physician visits and hospital admissions and on improvement in school attendance and social and family functioning compared to the previous two years experience of the treated patients and compared to a cohort of untreated patients Of similar severity. We are particularly interested in studying different patterns of conflict detouring (child centredness, triangulation and fixed coalition) and the different therapeutic strategies required.     

Marital Interaction and Depressed Women**

Most people diagnosed as depressed are currently married. The interaction of depressed patients with their spouses can contribute to the understanding of depressive syndromes. Questionnaires show promise of being a useful method of assessing marital interaction. From a questionnaire and interview study involving 75 psychiatric patients and 46 non-patients, a group of 22 married women inpatients with a depressive illness was matched by age to a group of 22 married women attending a family planning clinic. The depressed women were more likely to perceive their marriage as having less emotional involvement, fewer positive expressions of affection and more negative feelings and to perceive their husbands as dominating. These results broadly confirm previous studies. Hafner's spouse-aided therapy may be the most useful type of family therapy approach for depressed women.     

The role,power and influence of company chairs

This paper develops an analytical framework to depict the heterogeneity that characterises the role of board chair and demonstrate the potential variability in how chairs operate boards and exercise power and influence on strategy, control and resource related tasks at board level. Theories of power and influence, as applied to top management teams and boards of directors, are explicated within the context of contemporary governance practices that are establishing the role of the board chair as distinct to that of the chief executive officer. Specifically, the paper maps sources of power and varying contemporary chair practices, including chair nomenclature (i.e. executive vs. non-executive chairs), chair origin (insider vs. outsider) and chair time (full-time vs. part-time). A number of theoretical chair-power models emerge from this analysis and are subject to empirical analysis using data collected from 160 chairs of 500 FTSE-listed companies. Theoretically and empirically, the paper complements structural approaches to studying boards with attention to behaviour on boards. By linking board structure, board process and the exercise of influence, the study reveals both differences amongst chairs in how they run the board, but also that chairs’ differ in the influence they exert on board-related tasks. Full-time executive chairs exert their greatest influence in strategy and resource dependence tasks whereas part-time, non-executive chairs seem to exert more influence over monitoring and control tasks.     

Gambling and problem/pathological gambling among ex-offenders in Hong Kong

This paper considers the issue of ex-offenders who can be identified as having an addiction to gambling; one that has been long-neglected in Hong Kong. It reports on a study in which 378 ex-offenders were asked to assess their gambling involvement. The paper identifies the importance of social workers developing a better understanding of this issue in their work with ex-offenders and the findings suggest there is further scope for research and analysis about the extent of this problem and its management.     

Shards of the old looking glass: restoring the significance of identity in promoting positive outcomes for looked‐after children

There is a driving force within current UK child welfare policies which promotes a strengths led approach to both assessment and care planning for children in need. Social policy emphasizes the importance of tangible outcomes such as education achievement, which have been enshrined in statute. However, other developmental outcomes, such as identity, are subordinated. Notwithstanding the relevance of these more concrete indicators, this paper suggests that this focus has left a gap at theoretical, strategic and operational levels relating to more psychosocial aspects of human growth and development, such as identity. This paper seeks to redress that gap by considering identity as both a process and an outcome. Following a review of the literature on identity development, it presents an analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 13 young people and their social workers. The findings show how young people's identity is shaped by their relationships, can be a protective mechanism, and deferred or put on standby. In the concluding discussion the implications for social work practice are highlighted.     

Older Self-Neglecters: Interpersonal Problems and the Maintenance of Self-Continuity

Past research has examined links among animal abuse, child maltreatment, and intimate partner violence and demonstrated the importance of addressing the needs of both human and animal victims. We hypothesized that there might be a similar link between animal abuse and older adult welfare issues. As a first step in the earlier research was the development of a screening protocol that shed light on the link between domestic violence and animal abuse, we decided to follow a similar route to explore this new topic by asking state government representatives about their experiences, if any, with this topic. Here we report the results of a national survey of state Adult Protective Services agencies regarding their protocols for assessing animal welfare issues in the context of older adult maltreatment. We also describe a model assessment protocol we developed in collaboration with the Utah Division of Aging and Adult Services.