Bridging child welfare and juvenile justice: preventing unnecessary detention of foster children

Gaps in service coordination between child welfare and other child-serving agencies are well documented. This article examines the gap between the child welfare and juvenile justice systems and discusses a program, Project Confirm, designed to reduce the problems associated with this gap. Project Confirm aims to improve cooperation between juvenile justice and child welfare agencies to prevent the unnecessary detention of arrested foster children in secure facilities. The program's design is outlined, and implementation statistics and government partner perceptions of the program in its first year of operations are provided. The article also identifies future challenges to implementation and discusses the broader implications of the program. In making this appeal for coordination and collaboration among public agencies, I'm not talking about pro forma integration efforts-I'm not talking about memoranda of understanding or top-level reorganizations that have autonomous agencies vaguely reporting to a single box labeled "human services." Rather, I'm talking about the much more challenging objective of achieving real working partnerships at the front line. (Nelson, 1998, p. 6)     

Culture,the 'sick role' and the consumption of health

This paper revisits Parsons's conception of the 'sick role' and examines the relevance of his writings on the cultural understanding of sickness to the consumption of health in the contemporary era. In terms of current developments, I focus on the development of pro-active approaches towards the healthy body, and the growth of 'information rich' consumers of health care. These have become prominent themes in sociology, and while Parsons's writings are usually viewed as anachronistic I argue they remain highly pertinent to understanding the emergence of informed, body conscious lay people. If Parsons's analysis of health is more relevant to current circumstances than many critics assume, however, it is not unproblematic. The residual categories associated with the sick role obscure the continued utility of his work on the general cultural values informing health care. It is Parsons's analysis of these values, I suggest, that needs rescuing from restricted understandings of the sick role and highlighting as an important resource for contemporary theorists.     

Business patterns within telecommunications

The global telecommunications changed from a number of co-operating national monopolies offering a restricted range of services to a competitive, growing market with players of many types and sizes, offering a large range of services. How can vertically integrated incumbents align themselves and their systems to best compete in this environment? Business patterns and enterprise modelling offer a tool to model a large organization as a number of smaller enterprises that can compete with and co-operate with smaller specialist players in the market. In order to identify enterprises, this paper proposes that there are only a limited number of types of enterprise (manufacturer, service supplier, reseller, that these enterprise types can only interact in a limited number of ways (component supply, aggregation supply, resell supply, trading, end-supply and commission). With the use of examples, this paper illustrates these types of enterprise and enterprise relationships, and how they can be combined to build both internal and external supply chains, and discusses some of the conclusions that can be drawn from this analysis.     

Managing Technology for Competitive Advantage : Editors

Federal and other regulatory agencies often use or claim to use a weight of evidence (WoE) approach in chemical evaluation. Their approaches to the use of WoE, however, differ significantly, rely heavily on subjective professional judgment, and merit improvement. We review uses of WoE approaches in key articles in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature, and find significant variations. We find that a hypothesis‐based WoE approach, developed by Lorenz Rhomberg et al., can provide a stronger scientific basis for chemical assessment while improving transparency and preserving the appropriate scope of professional judgment. Their approach, while still evolving, relies on the explicit specification of the hypothesized basis for using the information at hand to infer the ability of an agent to cause human health impacts or, more broadly, affect other endpoints of concern. We describe and endorse such a hypothesis‐based WoE approach to chemical evaluation.     

Improving Weight of Evidence Approaches to Chemical Evaluations

Federal and other regulatory agencies often use or claim to use a weight of evidence (WoE) approach in chemical evaluation. Their approaches to the use of WoE, however, differ significantly, rely heavily on subjective professional judgment, and merit improvement. We review uses of WoE approaches in key articles in the peer‐reviewed scientific literature, and find significant variations. We find that a hypothesis‐based WoE approach, developed by Lorenz Rhomberg et al., can provide a stronger scientific basis for chemical assessment while improving transparency and preserving the appropriate scope of professional judgment. Their approach, while still evolving, relies on the explicit specification of the hypothesized basis for using the information at hand to infer the ability of an agent to cause human health impacts or, more broadly, affect other endpoints of concern. We describe and endorse such a hypothesis‐based WoE approach to chemical evaluation.     

Relationship to the bereaved and perceptions of severity of trauma differentiate elements of posttraumatic growth

The field of bereavement and grief has been expanding to recognise the potential for growth following the loss of a loved one. This study sought to examine the effect of the relationship to the deceased and perceptions of the severity of the trauma on dimensions of posttraumatic growth. Participants were 146 people who had lost either: a) a first degree relative, b) a second degree relative, or c) a non-related friend. Results demonstrated that both severity and the relationship to the bereaved differentiate posttraumatic growth outcomes. For example, participants who had lost a first degree relative reported higher levels of growth than those who had lost a second degree relative. Consistent with previous research in general trauma populations, the more severe the loss was rated, the higher the levels of growth. Implications for practice are discussed.     

Privatizing Australian Airports: Ownership, Divestment and Financial Performance

This article addresses the performance of the three largest Australian airports following their privatization. The airports represent cases of divestment of government business enterprises into privately-owned businesses each with differing ownership arrangements. The performances of the privatized airports are considered using financial data obtained from general purpose financial reports of the entities. There are significant implications for future divestment policies, including the value of divestment as a policy response in uncompetitive environments, the use of particular infrastructure investment models, and the nature of the linkage between ownership structure and financial performance.     

An Empirical Approach to Sufficient Similarity: Combining Exposure Data and Mixtures Toxicology Data

When assessing risks posed by environmental chemical mixtures, whole mixture approaches are preferred to component approaches. When toxicological data on whole mixtures as they occur in the environment are not available, Environmental Protection Agency guidance states that toxicity data from a mixture considered “sufficiently similar” to the environmental mixture can serve as a surrogate. We propose a novel method to examine whether mixtures are sufficiently similar, when exposure data and mixture toxicity study data from at least one representative mixture are available. We define sufficient similarity using equivalence testing methodology comparing the distance between benchmark dose estimates for mixtures in both data‐rich and data‐poor cases. We construct a “similar mixtures risk indicator”(SMRI) (analogous to the hazard index) on sufficiently similar mixtures linking exposure data with mixtures toxicology data. The methods are illustrated using pyrethroid mixtures occurrence data collected in child care centers (CCC) and dose‐response data examining acute neurobehavioral effects of pyrethroid mixtures in rats. Our method shows that the mixtures from 90% of the CCCs were sufficiently similar to the dose‐response study mixture. Using exposure estimates for a hypothetical child, the 95th percentile of the (weighted) SMRI for these sufficiently similar mixtures was 0.20 (i.e., where SMRI <1, less concern; >1, more concern).