Parenting capacity

We describe an approach to the assessment of parenting for families in which child abuse has been established to have occurred. Neither the category of abuse nor its physical severity adequately predicts the future wellbeing or safety of an abused child. The critical variable in determining the child's future is the level of disturbance in parenting. We argue against the most common approach to assessments of parenting, which is to generate a non‐hierarchical list of issues with the emphasis on relatively concrete and readily measurable dimensions such as social support, parental knowledge about parenting and the child's developmental status. We enhance the standard approach to assessment by organizing it around parenting capacity. We do not attempt to operationalize parenting capacity, de?ning it as the parents' ability to empathically understand and give priority to their child's needs. Adequate parenting requires that the parents be able to meet the challenges posed by their particular child's temperament and development (which may be shaped by the abusive experience) and also to accept and be prepared to address their own intrinsic characteristics which impede their parenting capacity. Parenting capacity is more dif?cult to assess than the more concrete and commonly measured aspects of parenting, but we argue that its assessment should be central to child protection management decisions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Public Opposition to a Proposed Nuclear Waste Repository in Canada: An Investigation of Cultural and Economic Effects

Residents of four northern communities were surveyed about Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's proposal to site an underground repository for high-level nuclear waste somewhere in the Canadian Shield. Opposition to the repository was relatively strong in all communities, but was strongest among aboriginal respondents. Path analysis revealed that trust in nuclear regulators, faith in science and technology, and anticipated net costs were important mediators of this effect. Aboriginals were less trusting, exhibited less faith in science and technology, and perceived the costs associated with the repository to be higher than their nonaboriginal counterparts. No support was found for the hypothesis that, after controlling for aboriginal status, financially insecure individuals would display greater support for the nuclear waste repository than financially secure individuals. Policy implications for balancing perceived risks and siting needs are discussed.     

Service Changes in a Central-Place System: County Tipperary,Ireland, 1966–19861

Shifts occurred in the availability of rural services in a central-place system of 143 centers in County Tipperary, Ireland, between 1966 and 1986. While there were considerable changes in the degree of availability of individual services, the overall range of services remained relatively stable at the level of the central-place system. Within the hierarchy, there was some evidence of polarization with villages recording the greatest losses and major towns recording the highest increases. New services that had emerged were strongly concentrated in the larger towns at the top of the hierarchy. Aggressive rural development policies had positive effects on the stability of the overall central-place system, although these policies may have had the unintended consequence of increasing polarization within the hierarchy.     

Parental substance misuse and child care social work: findings from the first stage of a study of 100 families

Parental misuse of drugs or alcohol is known to be a common issue for child care social workers, yet there has been surprisingly little British research on the topic. The study reported here attempts to address this gap. All files going for long‐term allocation in four London boroughs over on average 1 year were examined (290 files). Parental substance misuse (PSM) emerged as a major feature of social work caseloads. Of the 290 cases, 100 (34%) involved concerns about parental substance misuse. The families involving substance misuse were more vulnerable on a variety of measures: the children were younger, the parents had more individual problems and the families lived in more difficult social situations. PSM cases tended to be ‘heavy end’ at the point of allocation: they accounted for 62% of all children subject to care proceedings and 40% of those placed on the child protection register. There was a fairly even spread between alcohol and drug misuse, and a number of cases involved both. Substance misuse specialists were rarely involved in working with families, primarily because parents said that they did not think that they had a problem. Suggestions for ways in which policy and practice with PSM might be improved are made in light of these findings.     

What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Performance? Dialogue Theory and Performance Budgeting

This article examines the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)in the federal budgeting process. The early evidence on PARTprompts the search for a theory of budgeting that accepts thatperformance information will influence decisions but will notbe used in the same way from decision to decision, as the espousedtheory of performance budgeting suggests. Dialogue theory emphasizesthe ambiguity of performance information and related resourceallocation choices. An exploratory test of dialogue theory isundertaken through an experiment involving graduate studentsassessing PART evaluations. The results illustrate a varietyof ways in which different individuals can examine the sameprogram and, using logical warrants, come to different conclusionsabout performance and future funding requirements.     

Bayesian phylogenetic inference from animal mitochondrial genome arrangements

Summary. The determination of evolutionary relationships is a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology. Genome arrangement data are potentially more informative than deoxyribonucleic acid sequence data for inferring evolutionary relationships between distantly related taxa. We describe a Bayesian framework for phylogenetic inference from mitochondrial genome arrangement data using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. We apply the method to assess evolutionary relationships between eight animal phyla.     

Determining the expected value of information for new product introduction

Bayesian analysis is an important technique for marketing decision-making. To this point, however, these procedures have been used infrequently by practicing managers. Two major obstacles to the application of Bayesian analysis are the difficulties associated with generating input values and with performing the necessary calculations. In this paper a procedure is presented which, in most cases, removes both of these obstacles. The procedure has assessment needs with which the practicing manager may be more familiar. Tables are developed to alleviate computational difficulties.