Integrating a family-centered approach into social work practice with families of children and adolescents with disabilities

This article identifies a family-centered practice construct for working with children and adolescents with disabilities and their families. The experiences of these families have shifted considerably over the past 30 years. A legislative and historical context provides the basis for an understanding of present policies and practices that influence current approaches to service delivery. Though family-centered practice is emphasized in various practice settings, there is still a need to integrate this philosophy into social work practice with children and adolescents with disabilities and their families. In order to enhance the ability of the social worker to integrate this construct into practice, a framework for exploring the experiences of children, adolescents and families is provided. This framework provides an overview of factors related to the individual child, the family and siblings for the social worker to consider when working with these families. The social worker's role as collaborator, advocate, team member and family resource is highlighted.     

Family Work and Acquired Brain Damage

Acquired Brain Damage (ABD) causes immense difficulties for individuals and families and is increasingly recognised as a serious community issue. This paper focuses on the burden placed on family members with a head injured relative. The authors propose that when working with families with a member with a neuropsychological condition, the family therapist may be required to embrace a more flexible role. Depending on the developmental needs of the family, the family therapist may at times: provide educational information about brain damage and its effects arrange family support groups or wider network meetings be the family's advocate in the context of complex legal and financial bureaucracies or undertake marital, sexual or family therapy when required. Whatever the role played, a ‘family sensitive practice’ approach by family therapists is advocated. It is also deemed useful to develop a theoretical assessment model which helps the therapist locate where individual family members are in their negotiation of the tasks of grieving, restructuring, identity reformation and achieving a sense of growth after head injury. Further implications for clinical practice are outlined.     

Sexual and Reproductive Strategies Among Serbian Gypsies

This paper deals with a full range of sexual and reproductive behaviors among different tribes of Gypsies in Serbia. The examined traits include rates of fertility, mortality, age distribution, education, crime rates, and parental care. In addition, Gypsy traditions of culturally prescribed sexual behavior are also studied. It is found that Gypsy tribes employ different reproductive strategies, ranging from an extreme, for humans, r (reproductive) strategy to a more typical K (parental) strategy. The reasons bringing about these differences come from the Gypsies' readiness to adjust their behavior and reproduction in order to create the most favorable strategy in a given environment. This paper elucidates and contrasts the more typical r-selected Gypsies with a group of K-selected Gypsies living in a Serbian village.     

Feminine but not femme: the dual lesbian body

This paper deals with the ways in which young educated Israeli lesbians construct their bodies, disregarding the traditional categories based on binary criteria such as butch/femme. The "lack of codes" is deconstructed in order to bring forward their complexity and their adherence to the postmodern era. The results, based on 50 in-depth interviews, point to the young lesbians' tendency to unify within their bodies two trends: one that allows the mingling of the male with the female body; and another that eliminates the option to choose to be either femme or butch. This study points to means of social control that assure the acceptance of the dressing code as well as bodily codes by the lesbian community. Their acceptance allows drawing boundaries not only between the lesbian and the heterosexual women but also between the young lesbians and the former generation of lesbians who lived out of the closet.     

Streamlining for democracy: Intercultural predispositions of the Croatian secondary school population

This work interprets the results of empirical research conducted into the intercultural predispositions of secondary school students in Croatia. Data were collected in 1993 and in 1998, using specially constructed questionnaires in which, for a variety of democratic values, a Likert-type battery of questions, were given to respondents. In 1993 the stratified research sample consisted only of secondary school students, while in 1998 the research sample also included students, parents and teachers. An analysis of the results shows that: (1) students had, generally speaking, affirmative attitudes both in 1993 and 1998 and that the hierarchy of support for these values remained the same; and (2) all three groups examined in 1998 shared a common hierarchy of values. However, they differed in the degree to which they accepted democratic values; teachers ranked the highest, students the lowest. The fact that students' attitudes were much closer to their parents' than to their teachers' leads to the conclusion that schools are not the major factor in the "political" socialization of young people in Croatia. This indicates a need for the introduction of new curriculum in all secondary schools. This curriculum should include educational content that emphasizes democratic values and intercultural relations, and methods that stress students' participation through action, reciprocity, dialogue, and solidarity, led by well-trained teachers.     

An example of preverbal determinants in a classical analysis

Ego psychology adds a valuable dimension to classical psychoanalytic theory and technique by illuminating some of the factors that shape the development of self and object representations. Insight into identity formation can, in some cases, uncover preverbal determinants that create obstacles to oedipal resolution. This is illustrated in an analytic case that reached an impasse during the termination phase, which was resolved when the preverbal component of this resistance was recognized and interpreted.     

Environmental awareness and energy problems in Croatia

The article discusses the results of sociological research on environmental awareness in Croatia. A strong anti‐nuclear attitude is present, especially with respect to radioactive waste. Education is by far the strongest determining variable: those of high educational qualifications are critical in general as well as vis‐à‐vis specific issues, yet not necessarily critical in a negative sense.     

In their own words: The life experiences of Mexican-American and white pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers

The results of an ethnographic study of 32 Mexican-American and 17 White adolescents are presented. Fifty percent or more of the respondents in both groups experienced parental loss during their childhood years. Little information was provided by parents to the adolescents regarding menses and physical maturation. While parent-adolescent conflict arose in both samples, the conflict for the Mexican-American adolescents centered around choice of girlfriends and boyfriends while multiple sources of conflict existed between the White respondents and their parents. White respondents were more sexually active than the Mexican-American respondents, but the latter reported more stable relationships with the father of the baby. The experiences of the adolescents are both summarized and presented in their own words.     

Coming Out Disabled: A Transsexual Woman Considers Queer Contributions to Living with Disability

The author provides an autobiographical illustration of the similarities in coming out lesbian, transsexual, bisexual, or gay and taking visible steps to address a previously invisible disability. The essay begins with a comparison of personal experiences of transsexuality and invisible disability, and addresses the advantages of applying the coming out model to the author's disability. The author concludes that coming out is a process model that disabled individuals can use to aid a transition to caring for a new or worsening personal disability.