Expedited permanency planning: evaluation of the Kentucky Adoptions Opportunities Project

This article presents the evaluation findings of a Kentucky Adoptions Opportunities Project (KAOP), a three-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children's Bureau. The primary goal of the KAOP was implementation of three permanency planning activities: (1) risk assessment/concurrent planning, (2) one child/one legal voice, and (3) early placement in kinship or foster/adoptive homes. These activities were designed to expedite a permanency placement decision within 12 months for high-risk children. The evaluation of 124 high-risk children in the KAOP revealed that the majority of children had one or both parents coping with multiple risk factors, including mental illness, substance abuse, mental retardation, or family violence. The major barriers to permanency are discussed, as well as the policy and practice implications in the context of Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.     

Social Work with Clients Contemplating Suicide: Complexity and Ambiguity in the Clinical, Ethical, and Legal Considerations

Social workers in agency and private practice settings often work with clients grappling with suicide, either as an acute or chronic situation. Probably more than any other clinical condition, suicide forces the practitioner to confront complex ethical, legal, and psychological questions while managing an urgent circumstance. This article attempts to illuminate the ethical and legal considerations that may arise when a client contemplates suicide. Rather than advancing one answer, we stress that in training and the workplace social workers must fully consider the complexities and ambiguities of a client's experiences as well as their own clinical, ethical, and legal obligations.     

Testing the Stochastic Structure of Production: A Flexible Moment-Based Approach

Conventional production function specifications are shown to impose restrictions on the probability distribution of output that cannot be tested with the conventional models. These restrictions have important implications for firm behavior under uncertainty. A flexible representation of a firm's stochastic technology is developed based on the moments of the probability distribution of output. These moments are a unique representation of the technology and are functions of inputs. Large-sample estimators are developed for a linear moment model that is sufficiently flexible to test the restrictions implied by conventional production function specifications. The flexible moment-based approach is applied to milk production data. The first three moments of output are statistically significant functions of inputs. The cross-moment restrictions implied by conventional models are rejected.     

An Evaluation of Healthy Relationship Education to Reduce Intimate Partner Violence

This research evaluated the impact of the Within My Reach healthy relationship education program on intimate partner violence for 419 high-risk adults in an urban area. Key outcomes such as relationship knowledge, communication/conflict resolution skills, relationship quality, and physical and emotional abuse were evaluated through survey research immediately post- and 6-months postprogram participation. Results suggest that participation in the Within My Reach program is associated with a statistically significant decrease in physical and emotional abuse, as well as isolation behaviors. Differences by participant demographics and the role of communication skills and relationship quality as mediators of these outcomes are also discussed.     

Integrating Couple Teamwork Conversations Into Child Welfare Practice

This article summarizes the importance of and challenges to addressing couple teamwork issues in the child welfare population. Although there is substantial evidence to support the importance of healthy adult relationships for child well-being and the prevention of child maltreatment, there are a number of barriers to addressing these couple relationships in child welfare. These barriers include diverse family configurations and uncertain relationship commitments, the individual presentation of maltreatment, and worker discomfort with these issues. Additionally, there are few relationship programs designed specifically for low income individuals, and a number of policy and environmental constraints affect couple relationships in this population. However, building upon a comprehensive practice model for child welfare known as Solution Based Casework, this article describes casework skills to initiate and maintain couple teamwork conversations. These initiation skills include assessing patterns in everyday life, building partnerships with families, normalizing and externalizing problems, and tracking interactional sequences related to parent teamwork. The maintenance skills described include maintaining a common language, utilizing family team meetings, recognizing small steps of change, keeping treatment providers on track, and making the most of setbacks. These practical guidelines will assist child welfare professionals with building couple teamwork for child protection.     

Understanding knowledge transfer in an ergonomics intervention at a poultry processing plant

This case study reviews the knowledge transfer (KT) process of implementing a knife sharpening and steeling program into a poultry processing plant via a participatory ergonomics intervention. This ergonomics intervention required stakeholder participation at the company level to move a 'train-the-trainer' program, developed in Québec, Canada, into action on the plant's deboning line. Communications and exchanges with key stakeholders, as well as changes in steeling and production behaviours were recorded. The intervention was assumed to be at least partially successful because positive changes in work operations occurred. Ergonomic-related changes such as those documented have been cited in the academic literature as beneficial to worker health. However, several components cited in literature that are associated with a successful participatory ergonomics intervention were not attained during the project. A Dynamic Knowledge Transfer Model was used to identify KT issues that impacted on the success of train-the-trainer program. A debriefing analysis reveals that a failure to consider key participatory ergonomics factors necessary for success were related to capacity deficits in the knowledge dissemination strategy.