Independent Mental Health Advocacy: A Model of Social Work Advocacy?

ABSTRACT

Advocacy has received less attention in social work research than other aspects of social work practice. This paper draws attention to two tensions in social work advocacy; between worker-led advocacy and person-led advocacy, and between individual advocacy and system level advocacy. We argue that human-rights-based social workers must choose a person-led approach over a worker-led approach while advocating with both systems and individuals. This argument is made by drawing on findings of an evaluation of Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) in Victoria, Australia. It is shown that social work training had not prepared social workers for rights-based, person-led advocacy and that social workers in public mental health services were struggling to maintain the rights of people in their services even with assistance from IMHA.

IMPLICATIONS

• Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA) is a model of advocacy influenced by social work theory and delivered in part by social-work-trained advocates.

• Social work training is not preparing social workers for person-led, human-rights-based advocacy.

• Public mental health social workers are struggling to maintain the rights of people in mental health services even with the support of external advocacy services.

     

Parental Divorce and College Students’ Persistence and Degree Attainment

The purpose of this study is to analyze whether college students from divorced families are more or less likely than their peers to persist and graduate in 4, 5, or 6 years. Utilizing data from the 2007 Cooperative Institutional Research Program survey of first-year students, the results of multinomial logistic regression analyses suggest that students whose parents were divorced were significantly less likely to graduate in 4, 5, or 6 years. These findings held controlling for demographic variables, precollege academic indicators, college experiences, and academic motivation.     

Floral abundance and richness drive beneficial arthropod conservation and biological control on golf courses

Urban Ecosystems - Golf courses are among the largest, most ubiquitous highly maintained urban green spaces in the U.S. Although their primary function is recreation, a large portion of golf course...     

How Does Performance Management Affect Workers? Beyond Human Resource Management and Its Critique

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Temperamental,Parental, and Contextual Contributors to Early‐emerging Internalizing Problems: A New Integrative Analysis Approach

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Regression models for analyzing clustered binary and continuous outcomes under an assumption of exchangeability

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Bunk Bed Injuries in College Students

Abstract

We surveyed 1,431 college seniors to investigate the frequency and severity of injury after falls from bed. This data was analyzed along with data obtained from both the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the armed forces. We found that falls from bed are common in young adults and that injuries are more likely to occur with falls from bunk or loft beds than from standard beds (p = 0.025). Falls were most common when students were climbing out of bed or were startled awake. Alcohol use was implicated in 36% of the falls. We recommend that the heights of nonstandard beds for students be lowered, that alarms and phones be placed within easy reach, and that sturdy, fixed devices be used to descend. Intoxicated individuals should be placed on standard beds or lower.     

A comparison of tests of homogeneity for sparse contingency tables

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Policy deployment: A case study analysis

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