Linda Milbourne and Ursula Murray (Eds.): Civil Society Organizations in Turbulent Times: A Gilded Web?

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Open Adoptions of Children From Foster Care in New South Wales Australia: Adoption Process and Post-Adoption Contact

In Australia, adoptions from care are infrequent and mostly conducted in New South Wales (NSW) despite being legislated in other states. This qualitative study explored the experiences of the adoption process and post-adoption contact of eight foster parents adopting children in their care through the public welfare agency in NSW. The interviews were analyzed following a structured approach, by means of thematic networks. The study revealed that adoption processes and maintenance of birth family relationships depend on a number of factors (e.g., the behavior of the professionals, adoptive and birth parents, children's reactions, policy and practice contexts). However, the adoptive parents' experience of the adoption process was largely determined by the system, and in most cases this appeared to subsequently influence post-adoption connection in the families. The findings and the adoptive parents' recommendations are likely to apply beyond specific geographical jurisdictions. In addition, the reported complexities regarding connections through open adoptions at times resemble those tensions faced by children living in other family types such as those referred to in the foster care literature. Further research on some of these commonalities may expand in some countries the debate regarding adoption as an inherently contestable practice.     

Educating Social Workers for Practice in Integrated Health Care: A Model Implemented in a Graduate Social Work Program

ABSTRACT

This article introduces a curricular innovation, the Integrated Health Scholars Program (IHSP), developed to prepare master's-level social work students for practice in integrated health care settings, and presents preliminary findings related to students’ self-reported program competencies and perceptions. IHSP, implemented in a research-intensive school of social work in a large midwestern public university, includes specialized course work, interprofessional education across health science disciplines, and field practicum in integrated health care settings. Curricular components support stepwise learning and follows the British Columbia model of interprofessional education learning tiers: exposure, immersion, and skill mastery. Despite IHSPs successful development in a well-resourced, supportive environment, challenges facing our profession's ability to develop and sustain training of MSW students in integrated health care are discussed.     

Emotion,reflexivity and social change in the era of extreme fossil fuels

Reflexivity is an important sociological lens through which to examine the means by which people engage in actions that contribute to social reproduction or social elaboration. Reflexivity theorists have largely overlooked the central place of emotions in reflexive processing, however, thus missing opportunities to enhance our understanding of reflexivity by capitalizing on recent scholarship on emotions emanating from other fields of inquiry. This paper explores the role of emotion in reflexivity, with a qualitative analysis of social responses to hydraulic fracturing in Alberta, Canada, utilizing narrative analysis of long‐form interviews with rural landowners who have experienced direct impacts from hydraulic fracturing, and have attempted to voice their concerns in the public sphere. Based on interviews with a selection of two interview participants, the paper highlights the means by which emotions shape reflexivity in consequential ways, beginning with personal and highly individualized emotional responses to contingent situations, which then factor into the social interactions engaged in the pursuit of personal projects. The shared emotional context that emerges then plays a substantial role in shaping outcomes and their implications for social stasis or change. This study exemplifies the extent to which reflexive processing in response to breaches in the social order can be emotionally tumultuous affairs, constituting a significant personal toll that many may be unwilling to pay.     

Cosmetic Surgery: Beauty as Commodity

Cosmetic surgery stands, for many theorists and social critics, as the ultimate symbol of invasion of the human body for the sake of physical beauty. Interpreted as somehow qualitatively different from other efforts at altering the body, plastic surgery is considered to be so extreme, so dangerous, that it leaves no space for interpretation as anything but subjugation. While such criticisms are compelling, they tend to operate at either the grand level of cultural discourse or the highly grounded level of physiological effect. As a result, they leave out almost altogether the experience of the women who themselves have plastic surgery. This article draws from qualitative interviews with 20 female clients of a Long Island, NY plastic surgeon to explore cosmetic surgery as an occasion for autobiographical accounting and a particular kind of account of the self. Interview data suggest that plastic surgery allows women who undergo these procedures to successfully reposition their bodies as normal bodies. At the same time, it also requires them to create accounts that reattach the self to the surgically-corrected—but potentially inauthentic—body by invoking both essentialist notions of the self and corresponding notions of the body as accidental, inessential, or degenerated from a younger body that better represented who they truly are.     

Effects of group therapy on female adolescent survivors of sexual abuse: a pilot study

Treatment interventions for female sexual abuse survivors was explored through a pilot study examining the relationship between group treatment and adolescent self-image. Self-image was defined as body image, self-reliance, self-control, and impulse-control. An experimental pre-post design was utilized. Participants were 13 female adolescent high school drop-outs with a history of sexual abuse who participated in the National Guard Youth Challenge Program at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. Participants completed the Offer Self- Image Questionnaire for Adolescents. The hypothesis that group therapy was an effective intervention for sexual abuse survivors was not supported; however, this is likely due to the small sample size. Because this was a pilot study, mean trends were observed to see directional changes that may assist future researchers. Observation of mean trends revealed that participants who received group therapy increased in levels of impulse control while the group that did not receive group therapy remained the same. Mean trends also revealed that the experimental group had a decrease in self-reliance whereas the control group maintained their levels of self-reliance.     

The Reported Influence of Research Participation on Premarital Relationships

We examined the reported influence of participation in research on individuals in premarital relationships. Data were from a larger longitudinal study of 60 dating couples. We designed a questionnaire to evaluate the effects of participation. Responses to open‐ended questions revealed 3 major sources of influence: attention to relationship evaluation, effects on relationship activities, and indirect or no influence. Closed‐ended items yielded 2 dimensions: relationship‐defining influence and relationship‐evaluating influence. Relationship‐evaluating influence was greater the more respondents participated in the study. The higher were respondents' scores on relationship‐evaluating influence, the more their relationship satisfaction increased over the year long study. We conclude that the effects of participating in the research are primarily educational and enriching in nature, rather than therapeutic as suggested in previous research ( Rubin & Mitchell, 1976 ).