Working with Parental Substance Misuse: Dilemmas for Practice

Correspondence to Dr Brynna Kroll, Department of Social Work, University of Exeter, Richards Building, St. Luke’s Campus, Heavitree Road, Exeter EX1 2LU, UK. E-mail: brynna.kroll{at}plymouth.ac.uk Summary The impact of parental substance misuse on child welfare isnow being increasingly recognized. Drug and alcohol problemsfeature in a substantial proportion of families where thereare child-care concerns and raise issues about engagement, confidentiality,assessment and inter-agency practice. This article exploressome of the dilemmas faced by social welfare professionals whowork with substance misusing parents. Based on a qualitativeanalysis of 40 semi-structured interviews with a wide rangeof practitioners from both adult focused and child and familysettings, in both the voluntary and statutory sector, a varietyof emerging themes will be discussed and linked to those fromother studies. The problems of working with denial, the tensionscreated by different agency objectives and protocols and theway in which children can often fall through gaps in serviceswill be highlighted, as will the way in which some professionalshave sought to resolve the dilemmas they encounter. This willthen be used as a basis for beginning to look at constructiveways forward in relation to training, interprofessional andinter-agency communication and service delivery.     

How will the British post office cope with technological change

This article considers the trends and the new technologies available to the Post Office which will have some bearing of the transfer of message carrying fromt the Post to Telecommunications. It also considers the practicalities of electronic mail and the future prospects for the traditional mail service. The objective is to provide some practical guidelines for the communications input to corporate planning.     

西部地区人力资源培训市场现状与发展 --以甘肃省为例

西部企业在"学习型社会"和"知识经济"的双重背景中运行,应充分认识到人力资源市场化的重要性.通过对甘肃省人力资源培训市场的实证研究,试图找到西部地区人力资源市场化的规律性问题,探求人力资源培训市场的发展方向,为西部企业人力资源再造提供"终身学习"的平台.     

地方政府、士绅与清末民初河南矿权交涉

福公司是清末外资在中国开办的最大矿场,针对福公司矿场扩界及就地售煤,河南士绅、地方当局互为援长,展开保矿活动。与学界既有研究不同,福公司矿权交涉折射出士绅对于政府,依从多于抵制,绅权还没有"高涨"到可以制衡政府的程度;地方政府的表现也不是地方势力膨胀、中央权威下移的体现,实际上是"保全主义"思想的延续,"理为势曲"的现实常常迫使地方政府不得已屈意求全。     

Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression

Intersectionality theory is concerned with integrating social characteristics to better understanding complex human relations and inequalities in organizations and societies (McCall 2005). Recently, intersectionality research has taken a categorical and quantitative turn as scholars critically adopt but retain existing social categories to explain differences in labour market outcomes. A key contention is that social categories carry penalties or privileges and their intersection promotes or hinders the life chances of particular groups and individuals. An emergent debate is whether the intersection of disadvantaged characteristics (such as female gender or minority ethnic status) produce penalties that are additive, multiplicative or ameliorative. Research is inconclusive and as yet pays little attention to moderating factors such as employer type, size, geographic location or work profile. Drawing on administrative records for individuals qualified as solicitors in England and Wales, collected by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), combined with aggregated workforce data and firm characteristics of their law firms, we undertake a statistical analysis of the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the profession with a degree of precision and nuance not previously possible. In response to calls to broaden studies of inequalities and intersectionality beyond their effect on pay or income (Castilla 2008) we focus on career progression to partnership as our key measure of success. The original contribution of our study is twofold. First, we establish statistically different profiles of law firms, showing how the solicitors’ profession is stratified by gender, ethnicity and socio‐economic background, as well as the type of legal work undertaken by developing a model of socio‐economic stratification in the profession. Second, we demonstrate that while penalties tend to be additive (i.e. the sum of the individual ethnic and gender penalties) this varies significantly by law firm profile and in some situations the effect is ameliorative.     

Reducing mental illness stigma and fostering empathic citizenship: Community arts collaborative approach

An art therapy-informed community arts project to reduce stigma towards people living with mental illness in Hong Kong included three phases: 1) a public exhibition to raise awareness; 2) a workshop for viewers to create response art and generate approaches to alleviate stigma; and 3) a forum for people living with mental illness and viewers to create art and discuss programmatic recommendations. Results suggested that: 1) art exhibits paired with reflection fostered empathy; 2) creating art promoted a wider perspective and initiated dialogue; and 3) collaborative art making facilitated meaningful interaction. These findings offer promising strategies for art and social change.     

Parental Hope Communication and Parent-Adolescent Constructive Conflict Management: A Multilevel Longitudinal Analysis

Drawing from relational conflict management research and hope theory, the present study hypothesized that parental hope communication is positively related to constructive parent-adolescent conflict management. Utilizing three waves of longitudinal survey data from 393 Latina/o 6^th–8th grade students, we tested the hypotheses using a random intercept cross-lagged panel model, which partitions variance at the between-person and within-person levels over time. At the between-person level, we found that, relative to the sample averages, as Latina/o students reported higher levels of parental hope communication, they tended to report higher levels of constructive conflict over the academic year. At the within-person level, parental hope communication at one time point positively predicted constructive parent-adolescent conflict at the next time point. Our findings inform hope theory, family communication, and positive communication research by demonstrating the potential utility of parental hope communication for increasing constructive conflict in parent-adolescent relationships.     

The Impact of Training Videos on Attitudes About Parenting After Divorce

Many U.S. states require divorcing parents to take education classes about the impact of divorce on parents and children. As educators, psychiatrists, social workers, and others create these classes, it is important to evaluate what elements of the curriculum are effective in achieving targeted outcomes. Successful Coparenting After Divorce (https://coparenting.fsu.edu) is a free online divorce education course that focuses on issues such as the emotional impact of divorce, conflict reduction, and skills for parental cooperation. The course also includes videos covering topics including examples of negative and positive parental behavior, and testimonials from children. Pilot testing of the videos and the overall course impact with divorcing parents (n = 218) suggested that the videos’ utility were significantly related to the positive change in parents’ perceptions of their relationship with their former spouse, and their child-focused attitudes. Implications for practitioners who design or provide divorce education to parents are discussed.     

‘Environment’ Submissions in the UK's Research Excellence Framework 2014

There has been much debate about university research assessment exercises. In the UK, a major element of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) has been the research environment. Here we analyse 98 REF2014 ‘environment’ submissions in Business and Management Studies. We explore whether there are distinctive language‐related differences between submissions of high and low ranked universities and conclude that submission writers have a strong incentive to exaggerate strengths and conceal problems. In addition, innate biases such as the ‘halo’ and ‘velcro’ effects may distract the attention of assessors from a submission's strengths and weaknesses, since they are likely to influence their pre‐existing impressions. We propose several changes to improve how environment is evaluated. We also argue that the research environment would be more likely to be enhanced if the number of outputs submitted in future was an average of two and a maximum of four per academic, rather than the maximum of five currently being considered.