Working with autistic children and young people: sense, experience and the challenges for services, policies and practices

This paper aims to create narratives of autistic experience that are not restricted by a primary consideration of impairments or deficits but rather related to ideas about 'assets' as a means of developing professional practice. It is argued that children's rights legislation (UN Convention on Children's Rights, 1989, and in the UK, the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act, 2001) can encourage professionals working with autistic young people to search imaginatively for ways of conceptualising and accessing not only those assets but also the thoughts and feelings of their clients. Examples are taken from the author's own casework as well as from autistic 'insider' accounts which, it is argued, are providing insights into the inherently social contexts for the development of human feelings, thinking and meaning. While primarily directed at professionals, the intention is to encourage theories and the development of practices which are responsive to the wishes and views of disabled people and as such assist in their 'fight for full equality and social inclusion'.     

NEW SPECIFICATIONS FOR EXPONENTIAL RANDOM GRAPH MODELS

The most promising class of statistical models for expressing structural properties of social networks observed at one moment in time is the class of exponential random graph models (ERGMs), also known as p * models. The strong point of these models is that they can represent a variety of structural tendencies, such as transitivity, that define complicated dependence patterns not easily modeled by more basic probability models. Recently, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms have been developed that produce approximate maximum likelihood estimators. Applying these models in their traditional specification to observed network data often has led to problems, however, which can be traced back to the fact that important parts of the parameter space correspond to nearly degenerate distributions, which may lead to convergence problems of estimation algorithms, and a poor fit to empirical data.
This paper proposes new specifications of exponential random graph models. These specifications represent structural properties such as transitivity and heterogeneity of degrees by more complicated graph statistics than the traditional star and triangle counts. Three kinds of statistics are proposed: geometrically weighted degree distributions, alternating k -triangles, and alternating independent two-paths. Examples are presented both of modeling graphs and digraphs, in which the new specifications lead to much better results than the earlier existing specifications of the ERGM. It is concluded that the new specifications increase the range and applicability of the ERGM as a tool for the statistical analysis of social networks.     

Plan and control

Conclusion Is closer and closer social control the inevitable price of progress, a necessary concomitant of the continued development of modern social forms? We believe that this is indeed the case. Against those who see the new communications technologies as the basis for a coming communications era, and the new information technologies as the panacea for our present Age of Ignorance, our own argument is that their development has, in fact, been closely associated with processes of social management and control. The scale and complexity of the modern nation state has made communications and information resources (and technologies) central to the maintenance of political and administrative cohesion.The Information Revolution is, then, not simply and straight-forwardly a matter of technological progress, of a new technological or industrial revolution. It is significant, rather, for the new matrix of political and cultural forces that it supports. And a crucial dimension here is that of organizational form and structure. Communication and information resources (and technologies) set the conditions and limits to the scale and nature of organizational possibilities. What they permit is the development of complex and large-scale bureaucratic organizations, and also of extended corporate structures that transcend the apparent limits of space and time (transnational corporations). They also constitute the nervous system of the modern state and guarantee its cohesion as an expansive organizational form. Insofar as they guarantee and consolidate these essential power structures in modern society, information and communication are fundamental to political-administrative regulation, and consequently to the social and cultural experience of modernity.The exploitation of information resources and technologies has expressed itself, politically and culturally, through the dual tendency towards social planning and management, on the one hand, and surveillance and control, on the other. In historical terms, this can be seen as the apotheosis of Lewis Mumford's megamachine: technology now increasingly fulfils what previously depended upon bureaucratic organization and structure. But the central historical reference point is the emergence, early in the twentieth century, of Scientific Management (as a philosophy both of industrial production and of social reproduction). It was at this moment that scientific planning and management moved beyond the factory to regulate the whole way of life. At this time, the gathering of social knowledge became the normal accompaniment of action, and the manufacture of consent, through propaganda and opinion management, was increasingly based on analysis rather than on rule of thumb. If, through Scientific Management, the planning and administration of everyday life became pervasive, it also became the preeminent form and expression of social control. Planning and management were, necessarily and indissociably, a process of surveillance and of manipulation and persuasion. To the extent that these administrative and dominative information strategies were first developed on a systematic basis, it was at this historical moment, we believe, that the Information Revolution was unleashed. New information and communications technologies have most certainly advanced, and automated, these combined information and intelligence activities, but they remain essentially refinements of what was fundamentally a political-administrative revolution.Recent innovations in information and communications technologies have generally been discussed from a narrow technological or economic perspective. It has been a matter of technology assessment or of the exploitation of new technologies to promote industrial competitiveness and economic growth. This, in the light of our discussion, seems a partial and blinkered vision. The absolutely central question to be raised in the context of the Information Revolution of the eighties, is, we believe, the relation between knowledge/information and the system of political and corporate power. For some, knowledge is inherently and self-evidently a benevolent force, and improvements in the utilization of knowledge are demonstrably the way to ensure social progress. Information is treated as an instrumental and technical resource that will ensure the rational and efficient management of society. It is a matter of social engineering by knowledge professionals and information specialists and technocrats. For us, the problems of the information society are more substantial, complex, and oblique.This, of course, raises difficult political and philosophical issues. These are the issues that Walter Lippmann comes up against when he recognizes in the Great Society that centralization of power which deprives [citizens] of control over the use of that power, and when he confronts the disturbing awareness that the problems that vex democracy seem to be unmanageable by democratic methods. They are the issues that Lewis Mumford addresses when he argues that the tension between small-scale association and large-scale organization, between personal autonomy and institutional regulation, between remote control and diffused local intervention, has now created a critical situation. And they are the monumental issues that concern Castoriadis in his analysis of instrumental reason and the rationalist ideology, those myths which, more than money or weapons, constitute the most formidable obstacles in the way of the reconstruction of human society.Among the significant issues to be raised by the new information technologies are their relation to social forms of organization, their centrality to structures of political power, and their role in the cultural logic of consumer capitalism. Sociological analysis is naïve, we believe, when it treats the new telecommunications, space, video, and computing technologies as innocent technical conceptions and looks hopefully to a coming, post-industrial Utopia. Better to look back to the past, to the entwined histories of reason, knowledge, and technology, and to their relation to the economic development of capitalism and the political and administrative system of the modern nation state.     

Blue Suede Shoes: The Therapist's Presence

Therapy that prioritises feelings focuses on the development and maintenance of emotional relationships. I want to reflect on how the therapist's emotional involvement is developed and maintained in therapy that focuses on feelings.     

The Social Policy Response to COVID-19 – The Failure to Help Vulnerable Children and Elderly People

Public Organization Review - Norway’s handling of COVID-19 has been seen as a success. Vulnerable groups among young and elderly people, have however, not been part of this success. Their...     

Creating the cult of a saint: Communication strategies in 10th century England

In late 10th century England, a little-known and long-dead bishop named Swithun was canonised and became one of the most-widely culted saints in the country. Behind the creation of the cult of Saint Swithun were communication and political strategies with aspects of brand creation and extension, fund-raising, message creation and delivery, and stakeholder engagement using tactics such as word-of-mouth, the creation of special events and music, and use of specially commissioned publications. Using the prism of modern public relations practice and theory, the creation and maintenance of this important saintly cult is reviewed.