Turning 18 in specialised residential therapeutic care: Independence or a cliff edge?

This article describes research undertaken in 2018 in a therapeutic residential home for young women with multiple and complex needs in out-of-home care in England. Based on qualitative interviews with five young women, aged 16–18, and four professionals working with the home, the article analyses the under-researched leaving care needs and experiences of this group of young women. The findings highlight the tensions between notions of childhood and expectations of adulthood surrounding this group of young people. These converge around reaching the age of 18 and foreground vulnerability on the one side, and responsibility on the other.     

Between Control and Assistance: The Problem of European Accommodation Centres for Asylum Seekers

Accommodation centres are much more than means of securing asylum seekers’ housing needs. They are an embodiment of asylum and immigration policies. To understand these policies and their effects on asylum seekers, we need to ask what interests different institutional actors have in keeping asylum seekers in the centres. Based on the study of accommodation centres in the Czech Republic, in this paper I argue that the centres serve as tools of migration control. The prolonged confinement of a highly diverse group of people produced by the interconnectedness between asylum and immigration policies leads to asylum seekers’ disillusionment about the asylum procedure and nourishes various illicit activities. The centres enable state institutions to determine the nature of assistance available to asylum seekers, including legal aid provided by non-governmental organizations. By actively promoting the image of accommodation centres as benign places, the state also controls the dominant representation of refugee reception. In everyday practices in the centres, control and assistance are closely intertwined and produce an oppressive environment that engenders asylum seekers’ dependency.     

Effects of sociodemographic factors,stage of illness,and perceived stigma on the identification of a support person among women with HIV infection

Addressing the lack of research on the social distribution of social support and research on the social experience of women with HIV infection, this article examines how sociodemographic factors, stage of illness, and perceived stigma affected the identification of a supportive social relationship among HIV‐infected women. Data were collected from women with HIV disease living in the state of Georgia. Logistic regression analysis indicates that after taking account of other factors, marital status, rural‐urban residency, stage of illness, and stigmatization were significant predictors of whether the women identified a support person. Single status and rural residency had negative effects on the outcome. Those who were at the advanced stage of illness were less likely than those at the asymptomatic stage to identify a supportive relationship. Contrary to our expectation, stigmatization had positive effects on the outcome. Implications and limitations of the analysis are discussed, followed by directions for future research.     

Learning the Hard Way

This article reports on a survey examining relationships between stress, role strain, perceived role demands, and perceived support in 443 women who carried family and job responsibilities while studying in 17 Canadian social work, nursing, or adult education programs. Findings indicate that women students with higher perceived role demands had more stress and role strain, while those participating in distance education had less. Women students with lower incomes indicated they had more stress, while those with stronger support from family and friends had less. The author suggests that, because some tangible supports might increase stress and role strain, educators should evaluate existing provisions carefully, while continuing to promote greater awareness of and responsiveness to these students’ unique needs.     

Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in a Rural Native American Community

Nationally, the United States has a higher rate of teen pregnancy than any other industrialized nation. Native American youth have a higher birth rate than the national rate. A full-year healthy relationship program, based on Native American teachings, traditions, and cultural norms, was delivered to all eighth-grade students at a rural tribal school and a new group of eighth graders every year for 5 years, to teach healthy relationships and encourage abstinence. This article summarizes the Discovery Dating curriculum and compares the participants in the healthy relationship program to the comparison group, at the end of 5 years, in regards of the number of pregnancies as well as self-reported sexual behavior. The comparison group comprises students in the same community who attended a public middle school, rather than the tribal middle school, but the same public high school. All students had a similar age, socioeconomic status, culture, and ethnicity. Students who received the healthy relationship program (treatment group) had fewer pregnancies than the students who did not receive the healthy relationship program (comparison group). Of those who reported that they were sexually active, the students who received the healthy relationship program (treatment group) reported higher condom use than the students who did not receive the healthy relationship program (comparison group).     

Under the Cover of Books

There are any number of factors in the political economy of the social work profession which may inhibit or encourage social action activities among its members. In Canada, the precalence of government funding for advocacy organizations, a high level of unionization among social workers, and professional commitment to social action as expressed in the Canadian Code of Social Work Ethics are some of the factors that affect the profession's capacity to engage in social action.     

Making Space at the Nations' Table: Mapping the transformative geographies of the international indigenous peoples' movement

Social movement scholarship has focused increasingly upon the roles played by symbolic resources and movement discourses in the process of social transformation. Current socio-political approaches, often characterized by an excessive focus on movement structure to the exclusion of larger cultural considerations, still struggle to address adequately the process of transmutation from idea to form, from symbolic shift to material change. Through an examination of the international indigenous peoples' movement, this article illustrates the ways that space constitutes a mediating dimension of the transformative processes through which the symbolic potential of movement discourses may be manifested. The alternative spatialities and new geographies generated, deployed and legitimized by this movement have provided critical locations for indigenous peoples to enact the creative work of mobilization. It is argued that incorporating the work of critical geographers into existing sociological and political perspectives will contribute to the better apprehension of these transformative processes as well as those associated with the particularly spatialized phenomena related to globalization, development, nationalism and geopolitics.     

Chinese American Family Caregivers’ Perception of Program Use and Caregiver Stress

Caregiver programs provide specialized services and resources to reduce caregiver stress and improve family quality of life and health. Although there are resources and community services available, Chinese American family caregivers’ perceptions on caregiver programs and how specific services help to viably reduce their stress has yet to be examined. An in-depth interview was conducted with four Chinese American family caregivers in exploring their caregiving experiences and program service use; two of the caregivers were spouses and two were adult children. Content analysis revealed that their value of familial piety, and their need to ameliorate caregiver stress fueled their interest in new interventions to improve their quality of life and health. Spousal caregivers and adult children caregivers disclosed different needs due to caregiving, and adult children caregivers were less resistant to new interventions. The results of this study fill the knowledge gap on Chinese American family caregivers’ perception of caregiving in a cultural context as well as their needs. Suggestions for future research are to better understand the effectiveness of the specific services within caregiver programs that are effective in reducing caregiver stress among Chinese American family caregivers.     

Parental Depressive Symptoms, Children's Representations of Family Relationships, and Child Adjustment

This study extends the investigation of family process models of parental dysphoria and child adjustment, by examining depressive symptoms in both fathers and mothers, and by examining children's representations of family relationships as possible explanatory mechanisms. Participants were 232 children (Time 1 mean age: 5.99; 105 boys, 127 girls) and their cohabiting parents, who participated for three consecutive years. Children's internal representations of multiple family relationships were assessed by means of a story stem completion task. Structural equation modeling indicated that children's inter‐parental and attachment representations are part of the process whereby parental depressive symptoms influence child externalizing symptoms. Maternal depressive symptoms also predicted changes in children's representations of marital and attachment relationships over time. The implications for family process models of relations between parental depressive symptoms in community samples and child development are discussed.