Child Abuse Investigations: Reasons for using Child Advocacy Centers and Suggestions for Improvement

Child protective service (CPS) and child abuse law enforcement (LE) investigators have been required by the majority of states to work together when investigating criminal cases of child abuse. Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) and other^. multidisciplinary models of collaboration have developed across the United States to meet these requirements. This study surveyed 290 CPS and LE investigators who use a CAC in their investigations of criminal cases of child abuse. Reasons given for using, centers, include legal or administrative mandate and protocol, child appropriate environment, support, referrals, capacity for medical exams, expertise of center interviewers and access to video and audio technology. Respondents also identified ways that centers could be more helpful.     

INTERGENERATIONAL FAMILY LITERACY: WORKING TOGETHER

This paper brings intergenerational family literacy programs to the attention of both an education and a social welfare readership. It describes how they benefit both children of parents with unmet literacy needs and the parents themselves. The paper presents results, from a Department of Employment. Education and Training national study, which show an important overlap between adult literacy teachers and family support workers in their interests in their clients, and argues for the need for cross-sectoral cooperation. Australian examples of such cooperation are provided and a scheme is proposed linking a number of government agencies to provide intergenerational family literacy programs offering a suite of needed services.     

Coping with the Libyan migration crisis

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the EU's response to the recent Libyan ‘migration crisis’. The central Mediterranean migration route, via Libya, is now the principal route for mixed flows into the EU – primarily owing to the non-existence of a Libyan state to enforce migration controls in collaboration with the EU. The situation in Libya itself is dire, with extensive human rights violations committed against mostly African migrants. While the EU's efforts to curb migration from Libya through enhanced maritime patrol operations have been largely unsuccessful, the recent Italian–Libyan collaboration seems to have led to a significant reduction in the number of migrants departing from Libya's shores. In addition, the EU has also been enlisting transit countries further south – Niger, in particular – in its migration control efforts, with the provision of financial and other resources for capacity-building in migration management. Overall, the EU persists with buttressing its fortress, continues to push for the external hosting of refugee populations within the region and intensifies its collaboration with countries with a dismal track record in terms of respecting the rights of migrants and refugees.     

‘First things first,I'm the realest’: Linguistic appropriation,white privilege,and the hip‐hop persona of Iggy Azalea

The ‘hip‐hop nation’ is a multiethnic, transnational community that originates from and privileges urban African American experiences. Scholars have explored ways that non‐African Americans worldwide use linguistic features of African American English (AAE) as a way of constructing hip‐hop affiliated identities. The current paper ties these strands together in a study of the linguistic patterns of white Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, who makes use of AAE in her music, but not in other public speech. Our study presents a variationist analysis of copula absence in her lyrics. Findings show that her rates of this hallmark feature of AAE are extremely high, when compared to similar analyses of other rappers. We argue that her overzealous application of AAE features in her music, in order to create a specific linguistic style, enables a success that rests ultimately on the appropriation of African American language and culture, and the privilege that whiteness affords.     

The labour-market consequences of generational crowding

This paper attempts to distinguish between two alternative views of the labour-market problems faced by young workers in a number of industrialized countries in the 1970s and early 1980s. The first view is that the low relative earnings and high unemployment rates experienced by these cohorts were largely age-related; the second is that they are a consequence of large cohort size. A multi-country empirical analysis indicates that large cohort size tends to have a negative effect on the expected earnings (product of earnings and the employment-to-labour-force ratio) of a cohort; there is, moreover, a marked trade-off between the relative-earnings effect and the relative-employment effect, with large cohort sizes reducing relative earnings in some countries and relative employment in others. More detailed data for the USA show that the relatively low wages and high unemployment of the ‘unlucky’ cohorts have tended to converge to the patterns that would have resulted had the cohorts been more ‘normal’ in size, but that their lifetime income has been permanently reduced. Finally, baby-boom cohorts in several countries are shown to have been absorbed in a wide range of industries rather than through expansion of the traditionally youth-intensive industries.     

Gaining Satisfaction? An Exploration of Foster-Carers' Attitudes to Payment

The payment of foster-carers has long been controversial, reflectingboth philosophical debates as to whether fostering should bea voluntaristic or professional activity and concerns aboutplacement provision and service delivery for children. Althoughmany research studies have touched upon the question of foster-carers’satisfaction with payments, this has not been explored in anydepth. Drawing on findings from a study involving 1,181 foster-carersin twenty-one agencies, this article attempts to provide suchan analysis with four main objectives. These comprised: examiningassociations between attitudes towards payment and demographic,socio-economic and fostering career variables; comparing responsesbetween carers based in local authorities (grouped accordingto levels of payment and performance criteria) and independentagencies (IFAs); gauging the influence of carers’ ‘orientations’towards foster-care as a ‘professional’ task; andanalysing payments in terms of their different components, suchas fees, maintenance and certain designated expenses. Amongmany detailed findings to emerge were the generally low levelof satisfaction among local authority carers, especially incomparison with their IFA counterparts and the growing supportamong carers for salaried status. There was mixed evidence onlinks between attitudes towards remuneration and the performanceof agencies.     

Intellectual Property Abuses: How Should Multinationals Respond?

This article illustrates the causes of piracy and pinpoints piracy associated with registrations and with production and distribution. Based on interviews with British and American multinational managers working in China, the authors elaborate 10 corporate actions to counter the spread of the ‘inevitable curse’. In order to implement these 10 strategies, the authors recommend that firms treat piracy as a challenge, be corporately proactive, be aware of the repertoire of possible strategies, investigate co-operative action with other companies, agencies and government and be continuously alert to the dynamic nature of piracy. The problems reflected here are common to multinationals operating businesses around the world, and the destructive nature of piracy is likely to encourage more academic study to yield further insights for practice.     

Film Portrayals of Social Workers Doing Child Welfare Work

This article reports on research that investigated the images of social workers engaged in child welfare work as portrayed in movies, a major medium of popular culture. Findings from an analysis of 27 movies spanning from 1938 to 1999 are presented with particular attention to themes about how children are depicted as recipients of child welfare services and how child welfare worker activities and interventions are portrayed. Ways that the results of the research can guide intervention efforts that more accurately and more completely portray the activities, values, and knowledge base of the profession of social work are suggested.     

Trauma adapted family connections: reducing developmental and complex trauma symptomatology to prevent child abuse and neglect

Families living in urban poverty, enduring chronic and complex traumatic stress, and having difficulty meeting their children's basic needs have significant child maltreatment risk factors. There is a paucity of family focused, trauma-informed evidence-based interventions aimed to alleviate trauma symptomatology, strengthen family functioning, and prevent child abuse and neglect. Trauma Adapted Family Connections (TA-FC) is a manualized trauma-focused practice rooted in the principles of Family Connections (FC), an evidence supported preventive intervention developed to address the glaring gap in services for this specific, growing, and underserved population. This paper describes the science based development of TA-FC, its phases and essential components, which are based on theories of attachment, neglect, trauma, and family interaction within a comprehensive community-based family focused intervention framework.