Enhancing Collaborative Leadership in Palliative Social Work in Oncology

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report—Cancer Care for the Whole Patient: Meeting Psychosocial Health Needs—provided recommendations for meeting the palliative care needs of our growing population of older Americans. The IOM report highlights the demand for social work leadership across all aspects of the health care delivery system. Social workers are core interdisciplinary members of the health care team and it is important for them to be well prepared for collaborative leadership roles across health care settings. The ExCEL in Social Work: Excellence in Cancer Education &; Leadership education project was created as a direct response to the 2008 Institute of Medicine. (2008). Cancer care for the whole patient: Meeting psychosocial health needs. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. [Google Scholar] IOM Report. This article highlights a sampling of palliative care projects initiated by outstanding oncology social work participants in the ExCEL program. These projects demonstrate the leadership of social workers in palliative care oncology.     

Institutions and the shaping of different forms of entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is a broad concept encompassing a wide range of activities, from the Schumpertian ideal associated with innovation to simply creating a job for oneself. Because we ask about national differences in entrepreneurship, we consider national differences for entrepreneurship, the institutions, and if these relate to the emergence of different types of enterprise. We propose that national patent grants represent innovation and that national self-employment rates represent job replacement. Interestingly, we found that institutional factors that determine self-employment and innovation may act in opposite directions: what encourages self-employment might discourage innovation and vice-versa.     

When caregivers are in need of care: African-American caregivers' preferences for their own later life care

To “care for one's own” is a cultural expectation within a larger ethic of care in the African-American community. Applied to caregiving of aging elders, this ethic of care emphasizes the importance of providing in-home family care rather than opting for out-of-home placement. This study explores why a subset of African-American caregivers prefer or are open to out-of-home placement over in-home family care if they are no longer able to care for themselves. In-depth interviews with 24 family caregivers are analyzed. Three themes emerged including the desire to “spare our children” the burden associated with caregiving, viewing the next generation of potential caregivers as unequipped for the task, and having no one left to provide care for them.     

Travel Broadens the Mind

The onset of locomotion heralds one of the major life transitions in early development and involves a pervasive set of changes in perception, spatial cognition, and social and emotional development. Through a synthesis of published and hitherto unpublished findings, gathered from a number of converging research designs and methods, this article provides a comprehensive review and reanalysis of the consequences of self‐produced locomotor experience. Specifically, we focus on the role of locomotor experience in changes in social and emotional development, referential gestural communication, wariness of heights, the perception of self‐motion, distance perception, spatial search, and spatial coding strategies. Our analysis reveals new insights into the specific processes by which locomotor experience brings about psychological changes. We elaborate these processes and provide new predictions about previously unsuspected links between locomotor experience and psychological function. The research we describe is relevant to our broad understanding of the developmental process, particularly as it pertains to developmental transitions. Although acknowledging the role of genetically mediated developmental changes, our viewpoint is a transactional one in which a single acquisition, in this case the onset of locomotion, sets in motion a family of experiences and processes that in turn mobilize both broad‐based and context‐specific psychological reorganizations. We conclude that, in infancy, the onset of locomotor experience brings about widespread consequences, and after infancy, can be responsible for an enduring role in development by maintaining and updating existing skills.     

Growth versus Distribution: Does the Pattern of Growth Matter?

Despite the fashion for pro‐poor growth, there remains no consensus as to its meaning. This article proposes three possible definitions, and examines the pattern of growth over time and in different world regions. The growth of the poor's income can be broken down into a growth effect and a distribution effect. In 143 growth episodes, it is found that the growth effect dominates. However, in over a quarter of cases changes in distribution played a stronger role than overall growth in increasing income for the poor. Econometric analysis of growth regressions for each population quintile supports the idea that openness benefits everyone, but indicates a robust perverse relationship with governance. There is also evidence of a trade‐off between growth and distribution, suggesting that attention to distribution will be better for the poor than going for growth.     

Assesment of managerial behavior in the correction of ergonomic problems at an airport

As demanded at Collective Employment Agreement (CEA), three ergonomic assessment of work (AEW) were made into an airport from a big Brazilian city (in particular, at the flight tower), with a 2 years interval between them. The objective was to produce a report pointing out problems and solutions. At the third time (2010), were verified that the work conditions where almost the same from 2006 and 2008, although all recommendations made in the reports. This work presents how the AET Team worked with this situation. At the third AEW, due the lack of real changes and the necessity of a report, the strategy was to know how workers where dealing with the complains and constraint detected at the previous reports, and how it interfere in abnormal or danger situations. Trying to explain this organizational phenomenon, we resort to Resilience Engineering to understand how those f/actors played to achieve its objectives.     

Staff perceptions of staff-family interactions in nursing homes

Each year thousands of older adults are admitted to nursing homes. Following admission, nursing home staff and family members must interact and communicate with each other. This study examined relationship and communication patterns between nursing home staff members and family members of nursing home residents, as part of a larger multi-method comparative case study. Here, we report on 6-month case studies of two nursing homes where in-depth interviews, shadowing experiences, and direct observations were completed. Staff members from both nursing homes described staff–family interactions as difficult, problematic and time consuming, yet identified strategies that when implemented consistently, influenced the staff–family interaction positively. Findings suggest explanatory processes in staff–family interactions, while pointing toward promising interventions.     

The Migration Industry and the H‐2 Visa in the United States: Employers,Labour Intermediaries,and the State

Research on the migration industry has demonstrated the wide variety of roles played by private actors in international migration. However, so far little of this work has attempted to quantitatively measure the size and composition of these industries within particular migration schemes. Using the case of the H‐2 temporary working visa in the US, this article looks to better understand the prevalence, impact, and dynamics of the private labour intermediaries that offer services to US employers looking to hire workers from abroad. Using data from applications to hire foreign workers made to the US Department of Labor, this article finds that private intermediaries are extensively involved. Their broad inclusion raises questions of public and private authority in the visa programme, as the use of private intermediaries becomes necessary for employers to access and navigate the state institutions that oversee the programme.     

Delivering development? Evidence on self‐help groups as development intermediaries in South Asia and Africa

Donors and governments increasingly seek to deliver development projects through community‐based organizations such as self‐help groups (SHGs), but little is known about the effectiveness of such arrangements. This article briefly summarizes hypotheses regarding the effectiveness of interventions using SHGs and presents the results of an evidence review on the impacts of interventions delivered through SHGs on health, finance, agriculture and empowerment outcomes in South Asia and sub‐Saharan Africa. Though the impacts of SHG‐based interventions are generally positive, the evidence base is limited and does not generally test whether alternative delivery mechanisms might be more effective.     

Parental Conformity Expectations' Effect on Twins' and Singletons' Parent–Adolescent Relationships: Associations With Change in Adjustment From Middle Childhood to Adolescence

Growing use of in vitro fertilization (IVF) has resulted in an elevated twin birth rate, and a burgeoning population of IVF twins who are now aging into adolescence and beyond. This study tests a model examining whether parental conformity expectations have differential effects on twins' versus singletons' parent–adolescent relationship satisfaction, and if this effect is indirectly associated with relative changes in twins' and singletons' internalizing and externalizing behavior from middle childhood to adolescence. Using a sample of 278 IVF twins and singletons, path models demonstrate that twin status and conformity expectations interact to influence parent–adolescent relationships. Although there was an association between twin status and mother–adolescent relationship satisfaction among parents with high conformity expectations (r = .25, p < .01), this relationship was nonsignificant among parents with low conformity expectations (r = .05, p = .85). The differential effect of conformity expectations on parent–adolescent relationship satisfaction for twins and singletons was indirectly associated with relative changes in twins' and singletons' externalizing behavior from middle childhood to adolescence. Results demonstrate that higher levels of parental conformity expectations may not have the same effect on adolescent twins and singletons.