Use of data to assess performance and promote outcome achievement by public and private child welfare agency staff

Despite the emphasis on evidence-based practice in the literature, little is known about the extent to which child welfare workers routinely use data to assess the effectiveness of their practice, or consider an array of evidence informed practices such as peer record review, supervisory sessions or program evaluation as useful in improving their performance. This study, conducted as a part of the planning phase for a larger research and demonstration project measured frontline staff perceptions in both the public and private sectors in one state regarding these and other outcome-focused activities. Statistically significant differences were noted between public and private agency staff. In addition, the relationship between staff's use of data and their assessment of their own skill and the support provided by their agency for an array of out-of-home care practice activities are described. Implications for building the use of evidence-informed practice in child welfare are discussed.     

Healthy relationship education for dating violence prevention among high-risk youth

A federal grant was awarded to provide the Love U2 healthy relationship curriculum to low-income, high-risk youth. This research sought to examine the relative effectiveness of a brief intervention with this curriculum compared to the much more intensive relationship education programs that have been previously provided to high-risk youth. Data were collected from 233 participants through measures of training and relationship outcomes pre- and post-training. Participants experienced high levels of training satisfaction, significant increases in relationship knowledge and self-efficacy related to conflict resolution. They also experienced a significant improvement in attitudes toward couple violence in the desired direction. Implications of these findings for promoting healthy relationships and reducing dating violence among high-risk youth are discussed.     

Employers' knowledge and attitudes regarding organizational policy toward workers caring for aging family members

The study examined employers' knowledge of and attitudes toward working carers who care for aging family members. The study was based on the ecological model. One hundred employers were interviewed using structured questionnaires and 13 employers by additional in-depth interviews. Both research instruments included areas of disruption to the organization, existing policies, and feasibility as to developing appropriate policies to support working carers. Results show that caregiving caused a disruption in workers' functioning mainly by being absent, leaving work early, and coming to work late. Usually, there was "no policy," and half of the employers did not support introducing such a policy. Women managers in public organizations, who had less seniority and less previous experience with working-carers, tended to be more positive about supportive policies. Recommendations are included.     

Family system of help and aid against the background of social transformation

This paper sums up the results of empirical research into the intergenerational solidarity in Czech families which should help to answer the question whether the family or the kinship system can discharge their self-supportive potential adequately under the pressures of the transformation processes during the 1990s. It also describes the macro-social framework, i.e. the socio-political, economic and demographic context that influences the quantitative and qualitative aspects of kinship assistance. Overall, the paper provides a general picture of informal support systems as the basis for the specific recommendation for practical social work.     

The Implication of Wife's Occupational Attainment for Husband's Class Identification*

Drawing upon research indicating that the subjective class identifications of working wives are to a considerable extent the result of their own occupational attainments, this study seeks to determine if husbands of working wives also derive perceptions of status from their wives' occupational attainments. Regression analysis is conducted on a subset of husbands of working wives in three General Social Surveys gathered from 1973 to 1975. A husband's level of subjective class identification is unaffected by the occupational achievements of his working wife. If husbands and wives derive perceptions of status from different sources, then they may not perceive themselves as sharing the same level of status in society.     

Assessment of college students with the revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2): Sociodemographic characteristics and relationship

ABSTRACT

This paper presents prevalence data gathered from the fast-growing metropolitan southeast in the United States college campus representative sample through an on-line 28-question survey on the sexual, physical, and psychological harm in university/college dating and domestic violence relationships. The study questions were 1) what is the prevalence of dating and domestic violence on college campus? and 2) what are the characteristics of those affected by it? The results, derived from the Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2) and the dating experiences survey, reveal that college students’ gender identity, sexual orientation, grade point average (GPA), number of missing classes, current relationship status that they were associated with dating and domestic violence among college students. Statistically significant relationships were found between sexual violence and participants’ sexual orientation and the length of their romantic relationship as well as physical violence, including hitting and shoving, and participants’ sexual orientation and their class attendance. Institutional responses to prevent campus violence through prevention training, education, and intervention services could lower the prevalence of dating and help alleviate the adverse effects that it could have on college students.     

Representations of Jewish Childhood From 1950s Communist Romania in Memoirs by Women Émigré Authors to the United States

ABSTRACT

This article examines the memoirs of three Jewish women – Marianne Hirsch, Anca Vlasopolos, and Haya Leah Molnar – to understand how they remembered childhood in 1950s communist Bucharest. I first show how Marianne Hirsch’s part-memoir, part-critical book, Family Frames, uses her personal experiences to theorize tropes of transcultural dislocation as specific features of post-World War II Jewish children’s identities in 1950s Romania. I analyze how these tropes equally permeate the memoirs by two of her generation’s peers, Anca Vlasopolos and Haya Leah Molnar, highlighting how the two authors deploy them in their narratives. Overall, I show that writings of one’s 1950s childhood experiences in Bucharest by Jewish emigrées to the US offer new alternative discourses about facing the past and the present in Eastern Europe and the US by the tropes of initial transcultural, dislocating experiences at the start of their lives.     

The reconfiguration of social movements in post-2011 Romania

ABSTRACT

Since 2011, a series of citizen mobilizations have emerged in Romania, from local replicas of the ‘Occupy’ movement to the 2017 and 2018 mass protests against corruption. In this article, we develop three arguments for a better understanding of the successive waves of protests that have shaken the Romanian social and political landscape since 2011. First, while each protest has a specific claim and target, the forms of commitments, repertoire of actions and relationship to politics point to clear continuities between protest events that should be analyzed as part of the same cycle of protests. Second, while some analyses have emphasized the specificities of the Romanian context, we maintain that the actors and dynamics of this cycle of protest are simultaneously deeply national, embedded in the mutations of Eastern European civil society, and in resonance with the post-2011 global wave of movements. Third, while it is indispensable to analyze these citizen mobilizations as a whole, it is equally important to understand that they result from the convergence of diverse activist cultures, from left-wing autonomist activists to right-wing citizens and even nationalist militants. Each of these activist cultures has its own logic of action and its vision of democracy and of politics.