Leaving the door open for “tune ups”: Challenging notions of ending working relationships in family work

The working relationship is considered a central feature of direct practice with human services clients. There are many challenges when it comes time to end a working relationship, yet limited guidance for workers on successful relationship ending. This paper aims to increase understanding of the process of the ending phase of the working relationship for parents and workers working with families where child neglect is an issue. The paper draws on data from a small‐scale qualitative Australian study of perceptions of parents, family workers, and supervisors involved in eight parent‐worker relationships. Using semistructured interviews, participants were asked to explore how they experienced the relationship. The findings illuminate important aspects about the ending phase of the relationship; in particular, challenging the idea that parents' returning to services for support is a sign that the service has not provided a successful intervention. The paper challenges social workers to consider recurring parent–worker relationships similar to other professional relationships where there are episodes of service but the relationship is there to be reactivated where needed.     

Bad News about Bad News: The Disclosure of Risks to Insurability in Research Consent Processes

Many people have difficulty in generating random numbers. This difficulty suggests that potentially fabricated numbers encountered in investigations of scientific misconduct be examined for nonrandom behavior. The present paper shows that even with a conscious effort to construct random digits, many subjects are unable to produce digits with a uniform distribution. For this study, subjects were directed to try to produce random digits in three places in order to fabricate a series of “pick 3”; lottery numbers. Subjects were most successful at producing a random (uniform) distribution of digits for the leftmost place; however, success at one place was not associated with success at another. In addition, subjects did not select all digits with equal frequency. Of 8,280 digits chosen in this study, the order from most to least chosen was 1, 2, 3, 6, 4, 9, 7, 0, 8, 5. Finally, no strong correlations among subjects’ digit choices were found. The conscious effort by these subjects to produce random digits stands in contrast with the usual case of data fabrication in which the fabricator must devote a conscious effort to choose leftmost digits so the number has the magnitude desired and pays little or no attention to the fact that the rightmost digits should be random. The results of the present paper indicate that even if a data‐fabricator were aware that error digits would be examined for uniformity, success in constructing uniform error distributions is not guaranteed. The difficulty that people have in creating random error digits supports the utility of examining such digits in investigations of scientific misconduct.     

Muslims in France: identifying a discriminatory equilibrium

We analyze the assimilation patterns of Muslim immigrants in Western countries with a unique identification strategy. Survey and experimental data collected in France in 2009 suggest that Muslims and rooted French are locked in a suboptimal equilibrium whereby (i) rooted French exhibit taste-based discrimination against those they are able to identify as Muslims and (ii) Muslims perceive French institutions as systematically discriminatory against them. This equilibrium is sustained because Muslims, perceiving discrimination as institutionalized, are reluctant to assimilate and rooted French, who are able to identify Muslims as such due to their lower assimilation, reveal their distaste for Muslims.     

Social and family responsibility or self-interest?

Mothers’ increasing labour market participation is posed as a key aspect of a growing trend towards individualization — both for ill and for good. In ‘for ill’ versions, mothers’ employment is regarded as undermining commitment to family relationships and leading to a loss of community. In ‘for good’ versions, family and community relationships become contingent upon values of equality and respect. ‘Preference theory’ modifies the individualization thesis, with a posited distinction between mothers in full-time employment with ‘work-centred’ identities and those with part-time work who want ‘adaptive’ or ‘home-centred’ identities. This paper examines such issues, drawing on qualitative case study research on mothers employed full and part time in a hospital and an accountancy firm in the UK. It considers how the variable work ethos of organizations, and the ways mothers engage with these, can interact with their engagement in family and community relationships. In particular, it suggests that employment can be as much about social obligation in a local community, and commitment and obligations to family, as about individualized self-provision and options.     

Sky Service: The Demands of Emotional Labour in the Airline Industry

Following Hochschild's The Managed Heart, which emphasized the problematic features that emotional labour had for women flight attendants, a critical literature emerged which focused on the more enjoyable aspects of emotional labour in service employee experience. This article draws on this literature and analyses emotional labour as a gendered cultural performance but takes issue with the individualizing and pluralistic tenor in the post‐Hochschild discussions. Using a qualitative and quantitative study of nearly 3000 Australian flight attendants, it focuses on organizational and occupational health and safety variables, as well as sexual harass‐ment and passenger abuse — factors barely discussed by Hochschild's critics. The qualitative data indicate that emotional labour is both pleasurable and difficult at different times for the same individual. Gender is still pivotal, as Hochschild suggested, linking emotional labour with sexual harassment. At the same time, the most significant predictors from the quantitative study of whether emotional labour would be costly were organizational. Variables such as whether flight attendants felt valued by the company show that the airline management context is highly influential in the way in which emotional labour is experienced. As a means of understanding the complex relations in this important and eroticized area of service work where flight attendants, airline crews, airline management and passengers have convergent and conflicting interests, the article also deploys a new concept: ‘demanding publics’, to refer to trangressions of the legitimate boundaries of the service worker.     

What are the Links Between Theory of Mind and Social Relations? Review,Reflections and New Directions for Studies of Typical and Atypical Development

Twenty years after research on children's ‘theory of mind’ began, this field continues to be a leading influence in the study of developmental psychology and psychopathology. In this review we examine the contribution of research on children's theories of mind to our understanding of children's developing social relationships. Evidence shows that for both typical and atypical populations this relationship is neither uniform nor unidirectional. Theory‐of‐mind skills are multifaceted and the nature of the developmental relationship between different aspects is not yet known, and there is evidence that theory‐of‐mind skills both transform and are transformed by interpersonal and family relationships and by language communities. To understand the multifaceted and complex nature of development in this area, we need clearer definitions of the skills under investigation, as well as research designs that capture the transactional nature of the relationship between theory of mind and social relations. Addressing these issues should help to clarify (i) the processes by which children's developing understanding of others is influenced by the social environment, and (ii) issues concerning the specificity of theory‐of‐mind impairments in atypical populations and the processes by which these impairments develop.     

Social Model Theory: the story so far …

Social model theory has been developing in Britain since the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) published their Fundamental Principles of Disability (1976), followed shortly afterwards by Finkelstein's seminal exposition of the oppression that disabled people face (1980). Since then, various competing positions have been elaborated from this original starting point. Through a review of the literature, this paper outlines the course of those developments to date, in order to show the full range and potential of social model theory. In recording some of the commentaries on each of the various theoretical strands which have emerged, it also highlights some areas in which further theorisation may be desirable in order to make more explicit the links between social model theory and disability movement practice.     

Men's recognition of violence against women and spousal abuse: comparison of three groups of men

Our goal was to assess whether men in the following three groups differ in their ability to recognize and judge the severity of diverse forms of aggressive behavior: (a) men who reported being physically aggressive toward their spouses and who were entering treatment for domestic violence; (b) men who, after participating in a treatment program, were no longer physically violent; and (c) men who reported never having been physically violent towards their spouses (NPV group-non-physically violent). All 81 men in the study reported being verbally aggressive toward their spouses. Men who had been in treatment for spousal abuse and who had not been physically violent toward their spouses since finishing the program were better able than the other two groups to recognize emotionally abusive behaviors.     

The Culture of Giving: Informal Support and Gift-Exchange in Early Modern England

Alain Boureau, The Lord's First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage (1998), ix + 300 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, $55.00/£43.95, paperback $19.00/£15.25).

Rosemary Sweet, The Writing of Urban Histories in Eighteenth Century England (1997), ix + 356 (Oxford University Press, New York, £45.00/$90.00).

Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore (eds), Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of US‐Latin American Relations (1998), xv + 575 (Duke University Press, Durham, $19.95).     

Interprofessional education for community mental health: Attitudes to community care and professional stereotypes

Social workers are considered key members of community mental health teams, yet difficulties in interprofessional collaboration between social workers and health care professionals, particularly psychiatrists and nurses, have been reported. This paper examines some sources of these difficulties in terms of perceived differences in models of mental illness, attitudes and values, including stereotyping, professional identification and role clarity. Interprofessional education (IPE) may diminish negative stereotypes and promote multidisciplinary teamwork. A theoretical framework is described and findings from the evaluation of a 1-year programme of interprofessional education for community mental health are presented. These findings suggest that attitudes and values concerning community care for people with mental health problems are largely shared by different professions, but they do confirm the existence of interprofessional stereotypes and of perceived status differences. In contrast to previous research, there was no evidence of changes in stereotypes. These findings are discussed in terms of the theoretical framework and the design of the programme.